AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And I should end this discussion and leave.
I should end it forever and fucking leave.
But I’m a glutton for punishment.
I’m a glutton for him.
Because I stand rooted to my spot, my heart almost — almost — wishing that he could manage to do it. That he manages to break free and come to me.
“Every time I thought about him,” he explains roughly, “it made me want to commit murder. It made me want to hunt him down and fuck him up. And I knew it had something to do with your father. I knew it. I knew him and your fucking father were somehow connected and… That was the only thing I could think of. That was the only thing that would calm me down, that would make me not lose my mind. The only thing that would keep you safe from them. Because if I married you, they’d have to go through me to get to you. To get to them.”
No.
I’m not going to think about that. I’m not going to focus on that.
That he was trying to keep me and our babies safe even though he didn’t know what he was keeping me safe from.
That it’s so ingrained in him — his sense of protection — that he did the only thing he could think of. He gave it to me. Literally. He gave me his protection in the most traditional way possible.
“But I wasn’t going to keep you,” he continues, his gaze boring into mine, screaming the truth. “I wasn’t going to force you into staying when I know I can’t give you the things you want.”
“What things?”
He cringes.
He actually cringes when he growls, “Love.”
“Love.”
“Yes.”
“Why not?”
I don’t know why I said that.
Why there’s a need to rehash things when I already know the answer. When it’s only going to hurt me — all over again — what he has to say.
“Because I don’t fucking know how,” he snaps, looking frustrated, looking like a beast with bruises all over his face, trapped in a cage that he doesn’t know how to escape from. “I don’t fucking know how to love, all right? I’ve never loved anyone before. I’ve never wanted to love anyone before. Love is not the first thing on my mind when I wake up in the morning or the last when I go to sleep. That place has always been reserved for soccer. For my ambitions, my career, my championship trophies, drills and plays and fucking practice. And even though my priorities have changed now, I still don’t know how to change the fact that I know nothing about love. I don’t know how to change myself. I don’t…”
He trails off and I notice his eyes flickering down to my belly.
To where his babies are sleeping inside of me.
His mouth parts then. As if he’s trying to drag breaths. And he renews his efforts to break free. He renews his efforts to pull those metal bars apart.
Lifting his eyes, he rasps, “I don’t know how.”
Which is when I move back.
I have to.
His eyes hit me like a punch.
Right in the center of my belly.
In my womb.
There’s so much longing in them. So much longing and hunger. So much desperation and craving.
To learn. To change.
To know what love is.
And I want to tell him that he already knows. He already knows how to love. He loves his babies down to his bones, his soul, his very marrow. He loves his brothers, his sister, his family. His mom who died, who was abandoned by their father long before he actually left.
And I understand that it’s different from romantic love.
The kind of love that I want from him, but I bet, if he let himself, he can do that too.
But I’m not going to.
Because it won’t matter even if I do tell him.
This is something he needs to figure out on his own. This is a problem he needs to solve for himself. Just like his anger issues and his therapy and his relationship with his brothers.
I’ve done all I can.
Now it’s time for me to go.
Which is what I came here to tell him.
That I’m leaving.
I promised him that I’d do that, and even though things got a little sidetracked, I’m here to say goodbye.
“You’re right,” I say then and he flinches. “You can’t give me what I want. Because I don’t think you can give yourself what you want. I don’t think you’ve even figured out what you want yet. You haven’t figured out why you react the way that you do. Why you do the things that you do, that people call you Angry Thorn for. And I was one of them. I mean, I didn’t like the name but I still bought into that. I still thought that you were this angry and revengeful guy who could think of nothing else but winning. Nothing else but coming out on top, getting your trophy, your glory, success. And after what you did that night, the night you showed up at my dorm room, I don’t think anyone can blame me. But like many, many people, like your own brothers, I was wrong.
