Slowly...
Gradually...
He.
Lost.
The.
Battle.
He cracked.
The dam, the barrier he’d always hid behind, came smashing down. He crumpled like a paper building until he was stripped bare.
My heart hollowed as he shattered into pieces.
“Christ,” he breathed, his voice completely undone. “What have I become?”
He fell.
His knees gave out.
He slid down the wall like a melting glacier.
The moment he hit the floor, his knees came up caging his body, barricading him from the pain he couldn’t handle. His arms wrapped around them, curling into himself, pressing his forehead onto his legs.Hiding.
I stood there unable to move.
“...I fucking love you...”
Then my world turned inside out as Jethro Hawk—the most confusing, complex, and confounding man I’d ever met—started to cry.
His shoulders bunched.
His chest heaved.
He gave up the fight.
The man I feared, adored, and wanted to steal away from a life of emotional blackmail plummeted from lies, and I couldseehim for the very first time.
His anguished groan ripped out my soul, leaving it bleeding in hell.
His legs moved higher, his arms wrapped tighter, but nothing could hold together what was happening.
Blistering agony clutched me as I witnessed him coming apart. It was if every stitch holding him together ripped open, leaving him gasping and dying.
I wanted to be the needle to sew him back together.
But I couldn’t.
Not yet.
He needed to do this.
He needed to get it out.
This was his unthreading.
