“I…”
In my failed attempt at a response, his features cracked. The look on his face opening up something deep inside me that was tender and soft.God, it hurts.It hurt to see him hurt.
“I can’t,” I pleaded.
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t know why, Sterling.”
“I don’t know what you want from me, Thallor,” I saidquietly. A lie I told both him and myself. A lie that pained me to say. But the pleading was there, clear. Obvious. I was unravelling at the seams, the threads of my soul coming loose as he continued to tug at me.
“You. Onlyyou,” his voice was rough and hoarse. He looked frustrated now, angry even, as he looked at me. I pulled down the sleeves of my jumper, providing myself with extra protection of safety and warmth as nervousness bit at my insides. “I do not want to share. I want you,allof you, to myself. I think about you from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. My every waking thought is of you, and I want every memory from this day forward to be, too. I want to see you on your knees. I want to see you come undone. I want you to see yourself the way I do.”
Only a garbled attempt at words escaped me.
“Do whatever you need to do to come to terms with what I have just said. Distract yourself. Go on dates. Whatever the fuck you need to do, do it. And when you are done humouring people who do not deserve you and having dinners with immature, insecure little men who think it is acceptable to put their hands on you, you tell me. Tell me when you are done pretending there isn’t something here between us. I’ll wait.”
I’m done. I think I have been since the moment we met.
It’sanother beautiful day in hell,I thought to myself as I continued to look for my keys. Thallor’s words had played on my mind again and again until sleep had felt like a far-off concept that did nothing but drift farther and farther away. In my exhausted and anxious stare, I could do nothing but stalk around theapartment, muttering to myself like an irritable and emotionally unstable gremlin.
It felt as though my brain had been carved into measly, worthless pieces and scattered across Darling like a serial killer-themedGeocache.My terrible mood had proceeded to deteriorate when I’d realised, I’d run out of decaf coffee pods. Whilst I didn’t actually ingest caffeine, the coffee had a placebo-like effect that allowed me to be a decent human being before nine am. Something I was decidedly not, scowl set deep as if I could scare my keys into appearing.
I’d donned a pair of skinny jeans and a cropped white vest. I’d pulled on Thallor’s red Aldercrest University hoodie because I had, once again, forgotten to do any laundry and had nothing else to wear. It was three or four sizes too big, and I genuinely needed to hire an around-the-clock lifeguard because I was swimming in the thing. But it was soft and warm and had that familiar, yet intoxicating smell of burning logs and making s’mores by the fire. A scent I’d come to associate with home.
Even if our conversation hadn’t ended with any real resolution, I still wanted to keep a part of Thallor close to me. Especially because neither of us had said a word to each other since the previous afternoon. My phone buzzed in my pocket as I let out an exasperated sigh, the result of opening a drawer–one I was sure housed my keys–only to be mocked by a miscellaneous amalgamation of crap. My phone chimed again, and I pulled it out of my pocket. “Well, it cannot make my day get any worse,” I muttered to myself.Quincey, you fucking idiot. Ever heard of speaking too soon?
Jude (Do not text): Hey Quincey. I know it has been a while. I would really like to catch up and talk. I acted like an asshole, and I feel pretty remorseful about my behaviour. I was wondering if you would be up for getting a coffee?
“What the fuck?” I snarled to myself as I stalked back into the bedroom, silently cursing my optimism from moments ago–because my day could, in fact, get worse. I shifted my hands through my hair, which cascaded down my back, hoping that calming my curls would somehow translate into unbinding my tangled thoughts.
A part of me–the tragic and overoptimistic part–had expected Jude to fade from my life. Like a rotten piece of fruit, I hoped that he would simply wither away without any additional emotional investment needed from me. I mean, I had to see the guy every fucking day. That was bad enough, wasn’t it? The last thing I wanted was his tendrils of bad energy creeping into my safe space, myhome.Especially on a day like today, when the world felt like it had already chewed me up and spat me out before I’d even had my morning coffee.
The soles of my boots echoed across the floorboards as I stormed back into the living room, stumbling slightly as I tripped over a pile of unfolded laundry.Christ.It’s as if my soul rejects the very notion ofadulting.Thallor walked over to me, bridging the gap between us, metaphorical white flag in hand (not that he needed one, I was just crabby).
“Are you alright, Sterling? You’re muttering to yourself more than usual,” he spoke softly, and in such contrast to how he had the previous night.
Yes. No. I don’t know.I didn’t know if I was alright. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to get over the things he had said to me.
I was scared of the way you made me feel because for the longest time, I didn’t want to feel anything at all.
Because I knew in myself that I felt exactly the same way. In a liquid gold, his profession and words had been poured into the deepest, darkest corners of me. I knew I wasn’t a vase or pot, and certainly not a Japanese work of art, and yet every passing moment spent with Thallor felt like I was repairing bits of myself, too. I just didn’t know how to tell him.
Because like him, I’d tried. I really had. I’d wanted to keep my feelings tucked away somewhere safe. I wanted to keep them hidden, as I always did, locked away and unseen by prying eyes. But they continued growing inside me, pushing, stretching, and breaking through all those careful little walls.
There had always been little space for anyone else in my life. I don’t know when it started or how, really, just that it had. I’d stopped letting people in because it felt easier that way. It felt easier to keep the ugly, complicated parts of myself for me–no disappointing anyone else means no getting hurt, right?
But Thallor, he felt as though he’d been a part of me forever. In all the quiet, dark spaces that no one ever really fit into. I still felt it, that urge to keep my heart folded up tight. Partially out of habit, and partially because I was afraid of truly being seen. Even with everything that continued to ignite within me, with each day and each pull toward him, I didn’t have the courage to say any of it out loud.
“Just one of those mornings.” I sighed, offering up a tired glance as my own flag of surrender. “I can’t find my keys. I haven’t had a coffee. Jude just texted me some bullshit about hanging out.”
It was as if someone had turned on gravity with the way his face fell. Sure, I could have read into it, but I just didn’t have the time. I side-stepped his large frame, ignoring the way his broad shoulders seemed to take up space, whilst the smokiness of hisscent beckoned me closer. No better than a bull in a China shop, I began pulling up sofa cushions with frustrated enthusiasm, discarding them on my tufted rug in a disorganised heap that would simply serve to annoy me further.
“Sterling,” I heard Thallor say, somewhere off in the background, barely audible over my own thoughts.
He must have repeated my name one or two more times, my name evolving into something harsher and more clipped with every passing breath. Gone was the way he said my name with reverence. The jingling of keys cut through the daze of my exhaustion, pulling my attention to where I found Mortimer–a cat I was coming to believewasprobably a secondary demon sent along to torture me. He didn’t even deign to look at me, a meow of indifference mixing well with the soft clinking of metal between his paws.
