Ansel’s voice is thick as he speaks. “I don’t ever want to hurt you, not really, but I need you to listen to me. I need time apart from you. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. This is all too fast, and I’m overwhelmed. You’re making me fucking crazy.”
“Well, I can take a step back.” Even as I say it, my hand reaches out and touches his cold skin. He’s shivering.
“You can’t. We both know you’re obsessive and controlling. Just…just like your father.”
That makes my head rear back slightly. “That’s not a nice thing to say. I’m nothing like my father.”
He turns his head and swipes at his eyes. “I never met him, but from what I can tell, you are. And I just don’t want that in my life right now. I told you. I tried to be nice, but here we are. So leave me the fuck alone. Don’t follow me, don’t get near me.” He swallows, and his voice comes out rough and broken. “I don’t want you in my life.”
I take a step back, my hand falling from his arm. “Is that really what you want?”
His eyes flit to my chest, and his skin goes pale. “Yes. Yes, I want that.”
“Let me at least walk you home?”
He cries out again and shoves me. “Get! The fuck! Away! Leave!”
He tears off running, tripping slightly. I try to move, to follow him, but my foot gets caught in a crumbling board. I fall through the platform slightly, tearing my pants and nicking my knee on a rusty nail.Fuck, I’m going to get tetanus. I’m going to die before I can work this out with Ansel.
I watch him go as I pull my bloody leg from the broken floor and try to chase after him, but he’s disappeared. I pull out my phone and see Wylder has sent me Ansel’s address.
Well, fine. I won’t follow him, but I will check to make sure he’s arrived home safely. And then I’ll come up with a plan. I always have a fucking plan. It was ingrained in me as a child. If you don’t have one, you get injured, you get punished. You could even get killed.
I worry that having no plan will end up with Ansel hurt. And as much as his words pained me, ripped a goddamn hole in my chest, I don’t want him to be a casualty in any of this.
So I wait, staring at the blood pooling on the skin visible through my torn jeans. And when I’ve counted to a thousand at least five times, I stand up and follow the directions to the small, rundown apartment complex on the other end of town. As I walk, I don’t see Ansel, and with each step I take, my heart thunders in my chest.
I can feel something isn’t right, can sense it, but the words he said—needing space, needing time…to insulting me, screaming at me…
Like your father.
He didn’t mean that. He couldn’t.
Could he?
I turn the corner and see the small block of apartments. They were commissioned by the city decades ago and haven’t been maintained. The concrete is faded and stained, neglected and left to the elements. Rust crawls up the balconies, and there are even some windows boarded up. I can’t believe my beautiful butterfly lives in such a terrible place. He belongs somewhere safe, somewhere pretty, with a garden and a space to spread his wings.
This complex is far too stifling.
But then again, he’s not my butterfly anymore, is he? He’s flown away. Left me behind.
Pain radiates up my arm, and I clutch at it as I move toward the door that belongs to him.
The window shades are drawn, but I can hear him inside, talkingto himself, mumbling words I can’t make out. My fingers touch the pane of glass, and I try to wrench the window open. It doesn’t budge, which makes my heart skip a beat. That’s good. At least no one will be entering this way.
I move to the door and try to open it, but it’s locked as well. Thank fuck. At least he’s keeping himself safe behind locked windows and doors. It still hurts me though, because we’re not together. He’s behind a door I’m not allowed through.
What if he never lets me in again?
My hand squeezes my arm, and I wonder if perhaps I’m having a heart attack. That would be poetic, wouldn’t it? Passing out and dying here in front of my love’s front step.
But I know I’m not dying. It’s nothing more than panic. I’ve experienced this before. Usually, my father and his punishments were the reason for it. But now it’s Ansel. He’s the reason for my current distress.
He’s the only one who can make it better.
I stumble down to the sidewalk, staring at the apartment complex crumbling before me, and pull out my phone.
“Wylder,” I say when he answers.
