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“Don’t call me that,” she argued, snatching the cloth out of my hand. She put it to her own forehead, seemingly determined to do it for herself in the wake of my betrayal.
“You didn’t seem to mind before,” I pointed out, getting more comfortable on the edge of the bed. She shifted, tugging her nightgown down her thighs to cover the fresh wound that we both knew I’d already seen. “I told you to call me.”
“That was all before you told me I was just ‘available.’ I don’t want you to call me some meaningless fucking nickname or be here to make me feel alive when you’re the one who made me feel half-dead in the first place,” she argued, pushing herself up to sit. “I need to get to work. I think you can find the door on your own.”
“It isn’t meaningless,” I said. “That nickname is probably the only thing in my life that has meaning.”
“Then you should save it for someone who matters to you,” she spat, standing from the bed and moving for her bathroom when I made no move to leave her alone.
“You matter.”
“Then why did you say those things yesterday? Why try to hurt me if I matter?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. It pushed her breasts up, giving her cleavage that hadn’t been there previously and tempted me away from her face.
I didn’t know much about women, but I was fairly certain staring at her tits when she was pissed at me would be a mistake. “You want things that I can’t give you.”
“I just want somebody to love me,” she murmured, dropping her arms suddenly as if it pained her to think about the reality of that being too much to ask. “But I know that’s impossible.”
“If I could love anyone, it would be you,” I said, wincing as the admission came out before I could stop it. I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it was true. Something in Irina called to the darkest parts of me, but I knew she would call to the light parts, too.
If there’d been any left.
“If you could?” she asked, taking a step closer. Her face tilted to the side, the hope she hadn’t dared to feel before filling those green eyes.
“I don’t have a heart to love. I’ll never be able to give you that,” I said, taking a step away and putting more distance between us. It fell like a chasm, leaving us standing on opposite sides of an impossible void.
“Then I guess you were right about one thing,” she said, turning away from me and starting the shower as if I didn’t exist. “You should go, after all.”
She held a hand under the spray of the water, testing the temperature before she stripped her nightgown off over her head and stepped beneath it.
Dismissed, and for all that it mattered to Irina, I was already gone.
I did as she asked, leaving her alone while knowing it was the best thing I could do for her. She deserved a man with a heart full of all the love she could dream of.
That man wasn’t me.
