I have a shoulder to fix.
I have doors that I am getting very good at keeping closed and a voice in my head that tells me this is the right way and the only way and the way that makes me what I am and I have never had another voice to put next to it.
Not yet.
I just know I’m not okay the way I am.
The dark.
The quiet.
Push it down.
Just push it down.
Chapter 48
Rhys
It's Monday morning and Jamie has been silent.
We spent the whole day in my room. He slept over. I fell asleep with his arm around me thinking — for the first time in a long time — that maybe I'd gotten this right. And then I woke up and he was gone. No note. No text. Just the cold side of the bed and his smell still on my pillow and the front door closed behind him like he was never there.
I texted him.
He said nothing.
I called him twice.
He said nothing.
I sent one word.
Because what else do you say. I am not going to beg. I did that once — in a different room, with a different captain — and I know how it ends and I am not doing it again. I am not going to beg someone to be there for me. I am not going to beg for attention.
I’m not going to beg for love.
I just wish someone would choose me.
I can't go through that pain again.
But God, I want him to choose me.
Not accidentally.
Not halfway.
Not only when it’s easy or dark outside or nobody’s looking.
Fully.
There’s something deeply humiliating about how badly I want that from him. Like some pathetic part of me still believes if I can just be good enough — easy enough, lovable enough, worth enough — maybe one day he’ll look at me and it won’t feel like a decision anymore. Maybe loving me won’t cost him anything. Maybe it’ll be natural. Immediate. Easy.
I put my phone face down on the bed before I can do something embarrassing like text him again. Then I lie there staring at the ceiling, waiting for the feeling to loosen its grip around my ribs.
It doesn’t.
It just sits there.
