Me too. A platitude, a commitment, a vow is on my lips, but I lied to her enough already. “I’m scared I will fuck up, but not trying to do better by you scares me more.”
She breathes in deeply, as if my words deprived her of oxygen. “I don’t want to feel the void you left.”
The weariness in her tone cuts through me like a sharp knife. Will this hurt forever define who we are?
“Then let me in, Coraline.”
She leans back, hugging her midriff, shrinking away. And my completely mangled heart gets squeezed even more.
She’s not going to forgive me.
She’s already retreating.
“Let’s see how tonight goes.”
Oxygen leaves my lungs at her words, a sliver of hope blooming. “You mean this date?” I smile.
She sighs, covering her face and shaking her head. “You see… again, you’re changing the narrative to suit you.”
“But it suits you, as well.” I shrug.
Cora snorts. It’s not yet a laugh, but fuck if it isn’t a symphony this world needed. Well,Ineeded it.
“I want us to try, Cora. To try for real this time—vulnerable, messy, one day at a time—but I don’t think I can change completely. I can promise I will be honest with you, but I can’t promise to stop fixing things for you.”
Perhaps this honesty will cost me dearly, but I can’t pretend to become someone else for her completely. I will try to do better by her, but it’s me she fell in love with once. It’s the same me. With better morals. With less entitlement, humbled. But still me.
“Are we negotiating?” She gives me a lopsided smile.
“No, my love, in negotiations I would make sure the other party knows what they have to lose. Right now, I’m painfully aware of what I have to lose. This is not a negotiation, because all the bargaining chips are in your hands. I’m just begging you to give the entitled rich boy a chance. And I promise, I will never lie to you or manipulate you.”
A heartbeat.
She fists her hands.
Another heartbeat.
She looks away.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
She looks at me, her gaze filled with pain but also with remnants of something else… like she used to look at me when she was tying my tie in the morning.
“There is so much hurt and lies… The way we started…” She looks away.
I’m not sure if it’s hesitation, or if she is just avoiding the confrontation.
She swallows, playing with a napkin and blinking as she looks through the window into the darkness outside.
God, she’s breathtaking.
She was that night at the gala too—but that was a superficial infatuation. A rush of lust and intrigue over a woman who didn’t care I existed. Who laughedwithout self-consciousness. Who danced like nothing else mattered.
Now I know better.
Now I see the layers.
The cracks. The light leaking through them. The way she carries the weight of responsibility—both needed and self-imposed—with a quiet grace that humbles me.
