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I scowl at him, then fist my hand and hit him across the chest. He chuckles, the sound quiet and easy in the room.
“There you are.” He strokes my hair from my forehead. “I thought I lost you for a second there.”
“It was just a nightmare.” A very real one at that.
I feel like it’s the nightmare of my life. Since my parents’ divorce, I’ve had similar nightmares of them leaving. After Mum’s suicide attempt, I dreamt about blood for months.
However, this is the first time everything’s poured out at the same time.
“Nightmares are usually a manifestation of your subconscious.” Cole’s fingers are still lost in my hair, and I’d purr like a kitten if I didn’t want to stab him right now.
“Yeah, and my subconscious, just like my consciousness, hates you.”
That nightmare was a symptom of my guilt over what I let happen with Cole. The perverted pleasure I got from it. The heart-pounding sensation I keep on getting whenever he pushes my buttons or challenges me.
It’s all because of him and his damn existence that I’m spiralling out of control.
“I didn’t know you were fainting,” he says calmly.
“As if you would care?” This time I do pull away from him, inserting much-needed distance between us. “Your only goal is to get what you want. What if I faint or die or get hit by a freaking bus? It’ll all just be a part of your sick games.”
“That’s not true.”
“Not true? Give me a break, Cole. You’re only doing this to me to prove you can, to be the winner as usual, to see me shatter and lose.”
He interlaces our fingers and lays them across his stomach as he watches me with an unreadable expression. “Is that what you think?”
“That’s what it is.”
“It isn’t.”
“Are you telling me you would’ve done all this rubbish if you didn’t feel threatened by Aiden?” My voice loses strength by the end, and I curse myself for being this affected with that thought.
“Stop bringing him up when you and I are talking.” His tone lowers. “If it’s only us, then it’s going to be only about the two of us.”
“You want it about the two of us? Fine. Here’s a two-of-us talk… I want you to leave me the hell alone.”
“See, you have a problem, Silver.”
“A problem?”
“You’re a liar and you’re in denial. You can lie to yourself all you want, but you can’t lie to me. You don’t get to spy on me when I’m playing football or when I’m swimming and then pretend you don’t care about me. You don’t get to act territorial about me by chasing all the girls away, then decide you just did that for the family image. You don’t get to come all over my fingers, my tongue, and my dick, then pretend you don’t fucking want me.”
Oh, God.
I swallow the lump in my throat, staring at him as if he’s grown two heads.
“But those aren’t the only lies you tell yourself,” he continues in that infuriatingly calm tone. “You pretend you’re happy for your father when you secretly hate his new marriage because you always had a fairy tale dream about your parents getting back together. You love my mum, but you feel guilty towards your mum because of it. You sometimes wish you were never born as your parents’ kid, because maybe that would make you feel wholesome like other children with non-separated parents. You feel guilty for dropping your friendship with Kimberly, but you act like a bitch to her because
it’s your only defence mechanism to keep her away. You don’t want her to see the ugly parts of you or how empty you actually feel inside. You’re flawed and you hate those flaws, so you use the attitude and the looks to make everyone believe you’re a perfect human they wish they could turn into.
"You keep Summer and Veronica as friends, because they’re disposable and so you won’t feel the pain you still do whenever you look in Kimberly’s direction and realise she also left you behind and chose Elsa over you. Truth is, you’re jealous of Elsa and it’s not because of Aiden. You’re jealous not only that she took Kim, but also that Ronan and Xander are gravitating towards her and leaving your snobbishness behind. But you can’t tell them to spend time with you, because that will make you seem weak, and you loathe that more than losing all your friends who actually matter. You let guys get close, but never close enough to see who you are, what you are. You don’t allow anyone to see your makeup-free face, because you’re self-conscious about the freckles on your nose. You’re also self-conscious about listening to rock music, and you do it in secret because you’re worried that if Cynthia or anyone finds out you do listen to it, they’ll think you don’t deserve to play the piano. You —”
“Shut up!” My voice shakes, then breaks, coming out as haunted as I feel.
It’s like I’ve listened to a distorted retelling of my life. As if someone dipped their fingers inside me and wrenched out a part of me I’ve always kept under lock and key.
No. Not someone.
