I dropped my hands to his chest.
“That’s not good enough.”
“Not good enough?” he asked incredulously.
I dug my nails into his shirt.
“No, it’s not.”
His nostrils flared, hands latching onto my waist. “You’re insufferable.”
“No,youare,” I hissed, surprising myself with intense anger. “You won’t tell me what the hell is going on.”
“I can’t,” he said through gritted teeth.
Standing my ground, I got in his face. “No, you’re too scared that if you do, you’ll have to trust me.”
“I can’t,” he repeated.
“Can’t tell me or can’t trust me?”
War broke out across his features.
“It’ll ruin you.”
I laughed- a dark, ugly sound that I didn’t know I was capable of. I yanked him against me until our steaming breaths mingled.
“I’malreadyruined.”
A snap of electricity had us kissing. A spark had his tongue twinning with mine. A lightning strike and he slammed me into the brick wall of the library. Furious, passionate,feral. I would’ve let him take me right there in the open.
He tore from me, ragged breaths like thunder around us. “I have to go home,” he repeated. “And I don’t know if I’ll come back.”
A black hole caved in my chest. My heart fell. And fell. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear. Those words replayed over and over and over.I don’t know if I’ll come back.
“I thought you wanted me,” I choked, “You said I was wanted, but now- now you’re leaving me?”
My voice was a foreign, far away whisper. A vacuum sucked me down into an empty abyss. He would leave me after all, just like I’d been warned. Mom was right- she was always fucking right. I’d never been wanted.
“I’m doing thisforyou,” he insisted.
I shook my head, hot tears burning. “No, you’re a coward,” I stammered. “A cruel, lying coward.”
“Hate me, please, it’ll be safer for you if you do.”
“No!” I shrieked, shoving him hard. “You don’t get to leave without giving me a good reason. You said you wanted this- I thought you were mine.”
“I am yours, Angel,” he whispered, retrieving his phone and retreating through the emergency exit.
Leaving me empty. Numb. Shivering.
Broken.
18
Ollie
Itwastherightthing to do. The right thing to do. The right thing. The right…
