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“Do you?” I persist even when everything in me is gradually falling apart. “Isn’t that how we started? I wanted to feel. You wanted to remember. I need to know before I leave. Was any of it how I think? Was it real? Or were we just fucking like we agreed?” Shaking, I bite down on the tender skin of my lip, swallowing the sticky lump in my throat.
The air swirls and thickens between us. Fire rages deep in his amber eyes. It’s familiar and foreign all at once as it sizzles over my skin.
I stop breathing, watching as nothing but anger takes hold.
A large stride toward me and he snakes a hand around my waist, holding me until my back is against the wall. “Let me make this clear. I never just fucked you, Claire. I worshipped you.”
And I believe it because I felt nothing short of worshipped every time he stripped me bare.
But I’ve been stripped bare of more than just my clothes.
I hang on to his every word, and despite the pain hammering in my chest, my body becomes desperate for more of his touch. His molten glare is blistering but his touch releases enough for my breathing to slow before his grip tightens and he steals the air from my lungs again. I give it to him.
He brushes the hair from my shoulders and presses a gentle kiss to the top of my head.
“I broke a rule,” I breathe, my voice hardly audible with the admission. But he hears it.
He catches a tear with his finger. “We broke all our rules.”
“No. This one I made to myself.” I can’t swallow it anymore. Closing my eyes because I can’t bear to witness the rejection, I finally say it. “I promised myself I wouldn’t fall in love with you.”
H slips away.
No.
He had to have known.
He drops his hand.
My heart doesn’t break.
That would be less painful.
It simply freezes over just like his eyes. It expands, then shatters, all the sharp pieces clawing at me from the inside out.
It was all in my head.
When he tilts his chin, his eyes don’t meet mine. They look past me.
You’re an idiot, Claire.
The sting of rejection burns too deep, and I can’t stand to watch him look at me like this. I attempt to move around him for my suitcase, but his hand grabs the inside of my elbow.
His voice is gruff, tight, and heavy with the weight of his confession when he says, “I broke it, too. It was real for me.”
Trembling in his arms, he guides me to the bed. I sit on the edge—exactly how I feel—as he bends and takes my hands in his on my lap.
“I loved her, Claire. For so long, I thought she filled that part of my heart. There wasn’t room for anyone else, so I closed it off.” He glances at our interlocked hands before returning his attention to me. “Then you walked into my life and taught me you can’t put a cap on it. It doesn’t work that way. The heart expands and accommodates.” I watch as a thousand memories replay in a split second. “I don’t see her when I look at you. Sometimes, when I see how you are with Jay-Jay, I get angry for all the times she missed with him. That he doesn’t remember her voice, or how she felt. But I never look at you in search of her.” Tears coat my skin and trail down his hand as he cups my face. “I never wanted to fall in love with you…Until I did. And I love you so much it scares the shit out of me, because what you see when I look at you is the fear of losing you. Christ, Claire, you make me want to live just to watch you breathe. You brought me back to life.”
He’s wrong.
He breathed life into my body.
Sometimes, he breathes for me.
Hebroughtmeback to life.
I don’t know how every word breaks and heals me all at once, only to do it all over again.
