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I stared at him, my eyes wide. Was he fucking joking? I’m not going to be a prisoner to him just because he thinks he's a white knight. I was trying to think of the best way make him understand this when he said:
“Lennox, you don’t need to love me to let me protect you.”
Hot molten anger shot through me. Sometimes I hate Vic Wall so much. He is just so brilliantly stupid. He says asinine things like “You don’t need to love me.” I do love you Vic. I love you so much that I can’t stand to be in the same room with you, you fucking twat. And the fact that he comes up to Seattle asking, no, telling me to move in with him like it’s no big deal?
“I can protect myself Vic,” I replied. Clenching and unclenching my fists until the skin was white, I continued, “I have to get back to my dad. He’ll worry if I’m gone longer than an hour.” Total bold-faced lie. I was gone for months and my dad didn’t do anything. I think he’ll be fine if I’m gone longer than an hour, but Vic doesn’t need to know that.
“These are vicious special ops. They have training you can’t even dream of. Dean is a cuddly bunny compared to them,” Vic growled.
“Oh, I don’t know. I think if I tried really hard I cou
ld dream up some of their training,” I spat. We both stared at each other, in an aisle of a supermarket, while strangers went about with their shopping. Occasionally one of us would say “excuse me” when someone needed to get at an item we were blocking. It was all very surreal.
I sighed, and with that sigh, all of my frustration and anger wafted away like the ash cloud in a volcano. Noxious, deathly fumes leaving my body. I sagged against my cart, only filled with pumpkin puree.
“Why do you even care, Vic? You make it so clear anytime I start to get close that you don’t give a shit. Do you get off on torturing me? Is that it? You just don’t get enough of it in your day job that you need a little thing to torture at home?”
Vic snapped his head to the side like I’d smacked him in the face. “Fuck you, Lennox.”
“You’ve already done that,” I pointed out.
“Stop acting like the victim,” Vic said.
That did it. I shoved the cart away from me, and it crashed into a display of canned cranberry sauce knocking the topmost ones to the tiled floor.
“You keep making me the victim!” I shouted. “First the cabin, then Dean, then your wife,”—I was attracting stares now—“and now this!”
“You came to me about Dean!” Vic jabbed a finger at me, his voice rising in volume to match mine.
A young shelf stocker was quietly picking up the dented cans of cranberries while pretending to ignore our heated conversation.
“Only after I exhausted all my other options,” I countered. “I’m not some porcelain doll that’s going to break! Dean threw me against a fucking wall, stalked me for months, and yet I’m still here. My mother killed herself and my father checked out, I’ve been battling mental illness my entire life . . . I know how to take care of myself! Stop treating me like a child!” I was standing as tall as I could make myself, arms straight against my sides and my head held high.
“It’s the only way I know how to care for you. How am I supposed to love you when you’re running around banging your head on rocks and getting raped by perverts?” Vic asked me in a serious tone.
I scoffed. “I wasn’t wearing come-fuck-me heels or something and wearing a sign that said ‘rape me.’” If I had been wearing a sign that said “come rape me,” did that constitute consent? Alright, I’m getting off topic now.
Vic’s voice cut into my rambling thoughts: “Did you hear me, Lennox?”
I peered up at him, glaring. “Yeah, you basically said I can’t handle myself. Ass.”
Vic shook his head. “I said ‘I love you.’”
I frowned. “What?”
“I love you.”
“No, you don’t,” I said caustically. This back and forth, this push-pull, was breaking my bones as well as my heart.
“Yes, I do.”
I folded my arms. “Then why do you keep hurting me?” Emotionally, I was a bruised peach from all the times he’d dropped me.
He frowned. “I don’t know. I’m not very good at this. Will you help me?”
His question stunned me. Vic was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a man to ask for help. Was I willing to help him? Was I willing to put myself out there yet again? I don’t know. I don’t know if I was willing to allow myself to be vulnerable to him again. If I did, and things went south, well, it might actually kill me. I can survive vicious physical attacks, but I can’t survive another heartbreak by Vic.
Having been silent for more than a minute, I finally asked, “Are you actually saying you want to try?” I paused, collecting my thoughts, then continued, “That you’re not going to run away the first time it gets hard? No more of this ‘I’m not good enough blah- blah-blah’ shit?” I said, mimicking his voice.
