His brows jumped. “No?”
“It’s not possible.”
Stone looked away with a hardened expression, his hands still on my shoulders. “You’re a coward,” he edged out, letting me go. “Just when things become real, you fold into yourself. You keep these fantasies of you and me together safe inside your head, and once you’re face to face with the freedom you wish to sail away on, you can’t break the glass.”
I sucked in a brutal gulp of air.
I wanted to tell him that the glass bottle surrounding me already felt as if it had shattered. Because before him, my world was sealed and smooth. And now? Well, now my life was in jagged pieces, all the edges sharp.
I clutched my necklace. “Don’t do this.”
The pulse in his neck kicked, and from this angle, the scar below his left eye made it look like a tear was hanging from his bottom lashes.
One more piercing stare, and then, “Tell me, is it a something, or a someone keeping you from leaving?”
“Please, Stone. I’m begging you. Don’t ruin this.”
“And what isthisexactly, Circe?” he asked with his hands up at his sides, and my jaw clenched. “Will you not come with me because you feel you don’t deserve it? Is this a way to punish yourself because you killed her and you’re angry and want to hurt more people?” he berated, and “Stop,” I pleaded, but he didn’t— “Or will you not come with me because we’re only taking advantage of each other, and I’m something that’s in your control in a world where you have none? Because I’m something you can live without, and this whole time you’ve felt nothing.”
“You don’t know anything about feelings.”
“Yes, I do,” he said, taking a step closer and taking both of my hands in his. “Yes, I do. Hurt, scared, miserable, lonely, that’s all I’ve ever known. I was never allowed to express any of it .... Then I met you.” He squeezed my hands, letting them hang between us as he looked at me. “Circe, you make me feel things. Good things. Feelings I’ve never experienced before. Not until I woke up on a beach in your arms. So, don’t tell me I don’t feel when I’m standing here, a nervous wreck once again because you’re about to walk out that door.”
“But do you love me?” I asked him surprising myself and the space between us. I didn’t know it was what I needed until this moment. “Is it only desire, or do you love me?”
As if love were the thing that could fix my anger. Like a fairytale.
His brows were bunched together. “Love? Is this what you expect of me?” he asked with a look of hurt on his face. “Have I not made it clear how much I care for you? And yet you expect me to give you what’s left of my heart, bloody and bruised, just for you to crush it in your fist?”
I wished I could take it back. “No, I don’t expect anything from you.”
“Because the only thing you can ever love is your beloved sea, yes?”
My fists clenched at my sides. “The sea is what’s binding us together.”
“The sea is also what’s ripping us apart.”
“What are you saying?” I asked, terrified this was goodbye.
If either of us could reverse time, we’d take it all back and return to before he’d asked me to leave with him. We’d try this again, so things could stay the way they were. If we could, we’d stop time altogether. Create more.
Let me pretend until I don’t need you anymore.
Stone looked down at me with melancholy in his eyes. “What I’m saying is, my darling siren, I’m afraid of what I may do if I’m forced to be apart from you.”
CHAPTER 29
ADORA
New Moon
December 13, 2020
46 days until the Crimson Eclipse
49 days until the Cantini-Sullivan wedding
My beloved black sea,
