I raise an eyebrow at him, trying to figure out what he meant by that. “Okay, what?”
He brushes his knuckles under my chin and tilts my head up to meet his eyes. And the fact that my skin has the gall to light up with his touch isn’t helping at all. He gives me a wavering smile, one of resolution, which tells me he expected this and has already accepted this. And the fact that his touch ignites the cells within my skin isn’t helping at all.
Part of me is relieved because I won’t have to argue with him or force myself to be harsh enough for him to see my resolution. But it stings, too, more than just a bit, that he’s so readily conceded defeat,but then again, I have no right to be hurt since that’s how this is supposed to go.
Downright confusing to know a thing needs to happen, to choose to make it happen, and then to be hurt by it. It’s stupid how messy everything is all the time.
“Okay, I’ll do whatever it is you need. You need me to back off, I’ll back off. You need me to pretend we weren’t moving forward and that this massive thing between us doesn’t have the potential to be amazingly gorgeous, you got it,” he says, taking yet another soul-stealing step closer to me, our faces now close enough for our breath to mingle between us.
“But what good will it do, Qiang? We both know it’s there. But I get that you need time. There’s no way that fucker showing up here wouldn’t be a massive punch to the gut, and I get you need to catch your breath. So I can be just friends for now,” he says.
It takes me a beat to realize he’s not conceding defeat at all. He’s agreeing to nothing more than a timeout. A breather, a moment, before he steps back up to the plate, and now, after thinking this might be easier than I thought it would be, I’m gonna have to be more specific to make it clear that it ALL ends here and now.
I take a steady breath and gaze unwaveringly into his stupidly gorgeous obsidian eyes that do very little to help my resolve at all.
“You’re right, that’s what I need, except the part where you’re leaving yourself open to hope for something to change once I’ve caught my breath, because it’s not going to happen. You are an amazing person, Marcus, and I’ve let myself get really caught up in the dream of you, but you aren’t meant for me.”
Marcus’s lips part on a breath, his eyes widening lightly before they soften. “I completely disagree with that. Every time I look at you, I know you are theonlyone who has ever been meant for me,” he says with conviction, his thumb tracing circles along my jawline.
It floors me a bit because he’s said plenty, flirted relentlessly, told me unequivocally that he wants me, but it’s never been this pointed, this ardently firm, and my heart crashes wildly against the cage I’m keeping it trapped in.
I let out a harsh breath and take a step back. His hand drops at the clear statement of boundaries in the action. My face feels bereft the moment his touch is gone, but I hold firm.
“Give it time. You’ll change your mind when you move on and meet someone else, but this thing between us isn’t going anywhere. I don’twantit to,” I respond just as firmly, not knowing where I’ve got the bravado to hold a straight face when every nerve in my body is screaming at me to shut up and just step forward into those thick, beautiful arms that are waiting to hold me.
But Ican’t; it’s not fair to him. “Not because of you, Marcus, but because of me,” I tack on at the end because it’s also not fair to let him believe he’s lacking in any way. It’s not him that I’m running from; it’s myself.I’m the problem.
His eyes narrow as understanding crosses his face, a flicker of fight blazing in them, followed by an almost sardonic frustration.
“The classic, it’s me, not you,” he huffs out almost sarcastically.
I grimace at that and look away.I’mthe one causing the storm of emotions that are passing through his face, and I damn well know it’s not fair to look away from the pain that I’m causing just because it’s painful for me to see it, but I can’t handle it.Selfish on top of selfish.
“The classics exist for a reason; they’re cliché, but no less real. At least in this case, youknowit’s me, and not you,” I remind him quietly, not quite meeting his eyes.
“But I don’t care,” he says equally as resolute, and I know he’s not saying he doesn’t care about my feelings on the matter.
He’s telling me he doesn’t care about all this shit that’s happening that’s got me in this place. He doesn’t care that I’m fucked up, or that Kingston showing up here is turning me into a mess. I mean, he cares, obviously, but it doesn’t change how he feels about me or his desire for something to happen between us, which just makes everything so much more painful.
It would be easier if he’d just realize that this is all just a bit too much for anyone. I would get that better than I get the concept that he likes me enough to take this empty house filled with nothing but haunts and horrors.
I let out a sigh, the exhaustion between wanting to fight for him and fight against him weighing on my heart and making everything feel so heavy.
“But Idocare, Marcus. Find someone else. This thing between us is over,” I grit out, almost inflectionless, trying to get the words out without showing how deeply they cut my throat on the way out.
“Qiang…” he starts to say, reaching out and laying his hand on my arm, the slight touch sending flares of life through my skin.
The jarring sensation, although completely, almost desperately welcome, is enough for me to take the energy of it and use it to propel my arm back out of his grasp.
“I mean it, Marcus,” I almost growl, my eyes flicking back up to his with unrelenting resolve, even as I feel the tingles in my arm that his hand left behind, and that stupid, desperate desire to have his warmth seep back into my skin.
“I really,reallyneed you to stop. If you care about me at all, you’ll let me go,” I tell him, knowing if ever there was a way to make him stop, it was with those words. ‘Stop, if you really care, I need you to, ’ direct, basic, and without a trace of wiggle room or workaround.
Marcus takes a shaky step back, and his jaw tenses up at my words. I can practically hear the arguments he’s screaming at me from inside his head.
He holds my gaze, searching my eyes until there’s a shift and his face falls. A flash of something so painful it almost brings me to my knees to see it there in his eyes because I’m the one who put it there. He masks it quickly before forcing a smile. The look in his eyes is the look of a man who has conceded defeat, and my heart rattles angrily in my chest at me, knowing I’m the one who did this, to both him and me.
“I’ll stop pushing you, Qiang, but you need to understand that while you have full grounds to tell me to stop approaching you, you have absolutely none in telling me how to feel. My heart is my own to do with as I please. I won’t burden you with it any longer, but it’s still yours regardless. I’ll keep it safe until you're ready to readdress thisconversation,” he says resolutely before taking two steps back and pivoting around towards the door.
