Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
It’s cradling my drenched cheek.
His long fingers are splayed wide, spanning the side of my throat all the way up to my forehead, his digits going into my hair. And his thumb is moving, scraping over my cheek, swiping at the tears.
With the realization that he’s trying to wipe my tears as fast as they are coming, comes another realization. That he’s leaning over me, and he’s got his forehead resting on mine and he’s so close, his warm breaths fanning my tear-drenched mouth.
Which, in turn, gives me yet another realization.
I don’t know why these are coming to me in pieces, maybe because I’m too emotionally overwrought, but they are and this one is that along with his breaths fanning over my wet mouth, he’s also breathing out words.
Soft, raspy words as he wipes my tears and rolls his forehead over mine.
“I’m sorry,” he’s saying, “I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
He’s repeating it like a litany.
A chant.
A poem with soft words and repeated rhymes.
“I’ll do anything, okay?” he murmurs. “Anything at all. Just, please. Please stop crying. Just stop crying, baby. Stop crying, stop crying, please stop crying, sweetheart.”
And I could’ve taken it.
I could have.
His reverent touch. His sweet breaths. His sweeter words. But I can’t take him calling me baby and sweetheart—two endearments—in one breath.
It’s too much.
It makes me so achy. It makes me cry harder.
So much harder that in addition to him holding on to me, I need to hold on to him back. My arms move from his chest and fly over to his shoulders. They wind around his neck and, sobbing, I say, “It… h-hurts.”
“Tell me what to do. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
“Y-you hurt m-me.”
“I’m so sorry, baby.”
“I told you about my d-day. I s-shared things with you about my…”
“I wanted to know,” he says. “I just wanted to know.”
“Know what?”
“Everything.” He presses his forehead against mine. “I wanted to know every little thing about you. About your dreams, your passion. Your drive. Things that make you you. Things that make you smile, make you shine. Things that make you so fucking irresistible that I… I forget to breathe around you. I just… couldn’t not know.”
And God, I would’ve told him. I would’ve told every little thing about me. I would’ve laid myself bare, if only he had asked. If only he had been honest and he had come to me and he had said all these things to me before.
But he chose to lie.
He chose to pollute everything.
He chose to make a fool out of me.
“They were not yours to take, those things,” I tell him, pulling at his hair. “They were mine to give. You understand? They were mine and you took them under false pretenses. You…”
He rolls his forehead over mine. “I know. I know, baby, and it’s my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s—”
I pull at his hair again because I don’t want him to sound apologetic. I don’t want to hear regret in his voice. He doesn’t get to go off the hook just by sounding like I’m killing him with my pain.
“It was you,” I accuse. “You did my homework. You stayed up night after night, finishing up my stupid assignments.”
“I wanted you to focus,” he replies.
“On my play.”
“Yeah.”
“And it was you. You asked them to come, my friends.”
“Didn’t want you to be alone on your big night.”
My heart squeezes and I hate him.
I really, really do.
Because I can’t even enjoy these things. Things I always dreamed of. Things I wanted from him since the moment I saw him. His care. His warmth.
Him.
Because he tainted them with lies.
His selfishness. His assholery.
“I danced f-for you,” I say next.
He swallows thickly. “Fuck, baby, please.”
I pull at his hair. “You made me dance for you.”
“I—”
“W-why did you ask me to put on that dress?”
“Because I wanted to remember that night. Wanted to torture myself with the memory of it.”
I clench my eyes shut for a second at having my suspicions confirmed. “I hope you were. I hope you were fucking traumatized.”
He nods, his thumb dragging up and down my cheek. “It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, watching you dance through a screen.”
“That’s why you kept yourself hidden, didn’t you? Because you knew.”
His eyes find me through the tiny space between us. “That you’d recognize me. I knew you would and…”
I fist his hair again. “And what?”
“And you’d stop,” he confesses, the bruise on his jaw looking especially nasty. “I knew you’d stop dancing. If you knew who you were dancing for.”
That’s the thing, isn’t it.
I wouldn’t have.
I probably would have danced harder. I probably would’ve danced longer.
Because he was the one I was dancing for anyway.
“I would have,” I lie.
Because he doesn’t deserve to know the truth.
Not after what he did.
His fingers on my face, my hair spasms. “Every time you said you’d do anything to be his, I wanted to break something.”