My jaw drops. “Yourheart? How could I break your heart, Declan? We’re just friends, remember? You can’t have a relationship, remember? So please tell me, how could I break your heart? Why does it even matter what I do?”
I’m shouting, and suddenly, I realize there are tears in my eyes. And everyone in the room is staring at me. Humiliation burns through my veins, so I quickly bolt past Declan and out of the parlor. I don’t stop when I reach the hall, and I can’t bear the thought of going back up to that studio. So I run straight through the front door and into the pouring rain.
“Colin!” Declan shouts. “Get back in here!”
Spinning on him, I want to scream. Warm tears streak down my face with the sheets of rain. “No, Declan! I can’t go back into that house. I can’t go back into that room. I can’t…” My voice trails.
He follows me into the rain. “So let’s get out of here. We’ll go somewhere else.”
“For how long? A week? Until next year, when you’ll let me love you for a brief moment? Declan, I meant what I said. I can’t keep doing this.”
“I already told you,” he says before wiping the wet hair from his face. “I can’t do relationships, Colin.”
“Why?” I plead. My chest aches so painfully it feels like I could die from it. “All I’m asking you to do is love me,” I cry.
He takes a few more angry steps toward me. “Don’t you understand?” he shouts. “It’s because I love you that I can’t keep you. I don’t want you to live in this hell with me. You see what a bloody mess I am. I refuse to drag you under. I refuse to dull your shine.”
“But that’s what love is, Declan! It’s showing someone the worst parts of ourselves and trusting that they’ll love us anyway. And if I haven’t proven to you over the past eight years that I love every part of you, even the dark, messy, sad, angry parts, then what the fuck have we been doing?”
“It’s not that bloody easy,” he replies sadly, and I want to scream at how infuriating he is.
When I don’t respond for a moment, letting the rain drench me from head to toe, he takes another step closer. And for the first time ever, I take a step away.
He notices.
With alarm in his voice, he begs, “Please come back inside, Colin.”
But I don’t move.
“Colin. Come back inside.”
Even his command doesn’t get a response from me.
“Colin, I’m begging you. Please.”
The desperation in his voice is hard to hear. It’s like I’m dying right in front of him, and he doesn’t know what to do. Although I’ve told him. I’ve expressed it already. But I’m asking for more than he can give. And if giving me the bare minimum is too much to ask, then I know what I need to do.
I feel a sense of pride for what I’m about to say, but I’m a coward because I can’t look him in the eye when I do it. “I love you, Declan, more than anything, but you’re bad for me. Loving you…is bad for me.”
I don’t need to lift my gaze to his face to know that his eyes are bloodshot and sad. I don’t need to look to know his jaw is clenched shut, and his face is expressionless and dead.
My heart is rotting in my chest. Decaying into a painful husk. And yet, I still manage to get the words out.
“I don’t think we should do this anymore. I think…I need to just be free from you.”
He doesn’t speak, not at first, but I can practically feel thepain radiate. What I’m saying feels impossible and drastic, but it needs to be said.
“Then, you should go,” he mumbles sadly, loud enough for me to hear through the rain. “Because I never want to hurt you. And if loving me…” Emotion steals the words from his lips, and he stops speaking. The silence that follows feels like knives stabbing my chest. This all hurts too much. Knowing that I could take it all back and go back up to his room again only makes it throb worse, because Icoulddo that. But I shouldn’t. And I can’t.
“I’ll call a car in the morning,” I mutter with my eyes down.
Then, I walk past him and into the house. I don’t know if he follows, and I can’t bring myself to check. I find an empty guestroom to sleep in, although I don’t get a moment’s rest all night. It is by far the worst, most agonizing night of my life. It feels like dying. Like watching every good memory fade into oblivion.
The next morning, a black car pulls up to the front of the house, and Declan is nowhere to be seen. My eyes are puffy, and my head is pounding when I climb inside, and just the slamming of the door has me crying again.
The driver doesn’t say a word as I quietly sob in the back seat. And it’s not just that I miss Declan already, which I do, or that I regret what happened between us last night, which I also do.
It’s that he forced my hand. He’s the one who taught me to stand up for myself and make the choices that need to be made while also denying me the love and attention I deserve. He was the one who made me believe I deserved it in the first place.
