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She has to be able to feel how painfully hard my heart beats against my ribcage.
My throat is constricted, making it hard for me to breathe. I feel cut off at the knees faced with her desolation. I would climb the tallest mountains and slay the biggest dragons for her, but how do I do that when I’m the enemy in this situation? When I’m the one who’s caused her such hurt?
Her pain is my pain and my heart splits in two as I hold her wordlessly, wishing I could make it all go away.
Wishing I could turn back the clock and punch Devlin in the face instead.
She pulls away and steps back and I reluctantly let her go. Her face is red and wet as she looks away from me. She wipes both her cheeks with her palms as she tries to compose herself.
“Thayer…”
“It means something to me because I love you.” She doesn’t stop to wait for my reaction, “I fell in love with you and I trusted you when I should have known better. It was stupid of me really,” she says with a humorless laugh, “But I couldn’t help it. I tried to resist, but you came into my life and you were my dream man come true. Passionate, supportive, smart, good looking, kind, obsessed with soccer like me, you were everything I could have ever wanted. So I let myself be blinded by you, by your charm and your wit and your smiles, and I missed all the lies you were telling me. I trusted you and I let you lead me right off a cliff I didn’t even see coming.”
“I’m paying for my naivete now. I get to collect the shattered pieces of my heart from where you discarded them and I get to find a way to piece them back together somehow so I can move on and hope to forget you.” She says, her voice thick with emotion as she struggles to get the words out past another wave of tears. But determination shines bright in her eyes. “And I will. I fell in love with you and I’ll fall out of love with you, but not if you keep showing up at my door in the middle of the night. Not if you won’t let me forget you. So, please, just… let me go.”
Is it possible to suffocate from the inside?
To be so overwhelmed by the depth and breadth of your emotions that they become a physical thing in your stomach, pushing aside all of your vital organs and strangling them against your ribs until you feel like you’re going to die?
That’s what I’m feeling right now.
Her confession makes my heart rate skyrocket to new heights, followed immediately by a steep plummet as she speaks of her determination to make herself fall out of love with me.
I’m desperate to make her understand that this isn’t one sided. That I feel what she feels.
“You’re not the only one who feels that way. I l–”
“No!” She shouts, alarmed, putting a hand up between us to stop me. “You don’t get to say that to me now. If you were about to say what I think you were about to say, youneverget to say those words to me.”
I eat the space between us in two steps until I tower above her. “That’s not for you to decide. If I want to tell you how I feel, I’ll say it and you’ll listen.”
“Tell me then,” she taunts, “I won’t believe you. It’ll be just another lie to add to the list. You think the bet meant nothing? Your words will mean even less.” She says, cruelly.
I want to fight her. To tell her how wrong she is and then force her to listen anyway.
The desire tears through me and screams to be let out, but I control it.
I’m not getting anywhere by confronting her this way, so I go for the truth.
I show her exactly the agony I feel.
“Don’t do this, Thayer. Please. Be mad at me, curse, throw things at me, I don’t care, but don’t end this.” I plead. “Tell me what you need me to do. I’ll do it.”
She shakes her head wordlessly, refusing to meet my eye.
“Do you need me to give up football? My fortune? Do you want me to be humiliated similarly to what you’ve been through? Or maybe you want to carve me open in some way? I’m already slowly bleeding out on your floor, but I’ll give you a knife and let you finish the job if it means you’ll forgive me. Just tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”
“I’m not going to forgive you.” She tells me, her voice carrying all of the sadness in the world.
I cup her face gently and bend my head towards her, bringing my lips down in a featherlight kiss on her cheek.
“I’m not going to give up.”
For a brief moment, she closes her eyes and leans into my touch. She’s seeking the comfort that she subconsciously knows only I give her, even as her head is making her fight her heart.
But then she pulls away and the spell is broken.
“Please don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”
