“I told myself it was for you,” I say. “That if I made you hate me, you’d walk away and have a real life. One that didn’t have me rotting behind bars in the middle of it.”
Her eyes come back to mine. Wet. Furious. Alive.
“You made me feel dirty, Zane,” she says.
The words hit me so hard that I almost step back.
“Sky.”
“No.” Her voice cuts through me. “You made me feel stupid for wanting you, for trusting you, for thinking I mattered to you.”
“You did.”
Her laugh breaks apart on its way out. “Yeah? You had a funny fucking way of showing it.”
“I know.”
“No, Zane. I don’t think you do.” Her eyes burn into mine, and there is no looking away. There never has been. “Because when you said those things, I believed you. Every single word. I believed I had made myself nothing to the one person I thought actually saw me.”
I can’t breathe because there it is.
The damage I did. Not the noble version I fed myself in prison to survive the nights. The real wound, with my name carved into it, standing in front of me, tears in her eyes, furious at herself for them.
“I did it because I thought I had already ruined you,” I say. “I thought being with me had already dragged you into shit you never should have been near. The fights. The danger. The cops. All of it.”
Her lips part, but she doesn’t speak.
“I was sitting in that place, and all I could think was that if you loved me, you would wait. You would waste yourself on visits, phone calls, and letters. You would build your whole life around a man who could not even touch you. You would give me the best years of your life because you were too loyal to save yourself.”
Her eyes shine harder.
“And I couldn’t let you do that,” I continue. “Not after everything you had already survived. Not after every person who had already taken something from you. I couldn’t be anotherselfish prick standing there with his hand out, asking for more.” My throat burns. “So I made myself something ugly enough for you to leave.”
Her beautiful face looks so sad, and I see the pain in her eyes.
It guts me. Completely and without mercy.
“I said the worst things I could think of because I knew exactly where they would land. I knew sex mattered to you, that trust mattered, and that you did not give yourself to people easily.” My voice drops until it is barely holding together. “I knew that, and I used it against you.”
She looks away, blinking hard and fast.
“It was cruel, Sky. And it was fucked up. It was me making a choice for you because I didn’t trust you to make your own.”
Her breath catches, but still she doesn’t say a word.
“I told myself I was saving you,” I say, as a tear slips down her cheek. She wipes it away quickly, angry at it, angry at me, maybe even angry at herself for still standing here, listening to what I have to say.
“You should have let me choose, Zane,” she says.
“I know.”
“You should have trusted me.”
“I know.”
“You should have loved me enough not to turn my body into a weapon against me.”
My hands curl at my sides because I want to reach for her more than I have ever wanted anything, but I don’t get to. Not now. Not while she is bleeding from a wound I gave her.
