Instead of backing off like he wants me to, I go up to him.
I bump his stupid shoes with my ugly cut-up ballerina toes. “I told you I’m not going until you tell me why. Why are you doing this, Reed? Why are you making yourself suffer?”
He clenches his jaw, his eyes brimming with something.
Something frustrating and angry and agonizing that I don’t understand.
But then he makes me.
He makes me understand all of it as he asks, “You want to know why? You want to know why I won’t fuck you? It’s because of you.”
“What?”
“It’s because ofthis,” he spits out, looking me up and down with a coldness that still has the power to chill my bones. “It’s because you just won’t let it go. It’s because you won’t stop begging.”
I draw back from him. “Begging.”
But he bends down to cover the distance that I’ve created between us. “What else do you think you’re doing? You forgave me even when I didn’t deserve it, fine. I gave you a couple of mind-blowing orgasms. I rocked your world. But now you’re back to begging. Now you’re back to thinking that I’m a fucking hero. A fucking hero who you can let inside your body. A hero who can fuck you. Where does this end, Fae? If I fuck you, are you going to fall in love with me again? Because if you are, tell me right now so I can go hide my fucking Mustang. Because I’m only going to break your heart again.”
“Get out.”
I say it calmly, evenly.
So much so that I don’t even think that I’ve said it. I think I’ve whispered it. Whispered it to the wind so it can carry my words to him.
The guy who’s standing only a few feet away from me.
But we might as well be miles apart. Millions of them.
He might as well be in a different dimension because of what he just said.
Because of what he just stupidly, callously said.
“Get out,” I say again, this time loudly, more determinedly. “Now.”
I don’t know if I’m imagining it or what but something flashes through his features. A wave of anguish, and he swallows before throwing me a short nod. “Fine.”
He turns around and leaves then.
I watch him bound down the porch stairs and stride toward his car that glints in the night. I watch him jerk the door open and get inside before peeling out of the driveway.
I watch him and watch him and when I can’t see him anymore, my eyes fill with tears.
A sob catches in my throat.
But I don’t let it out.
I won’t.
I refuse to cry for him anymore. I refuse to waste even a single tear on him. After all the progress we’ve made, all the tender and intimate moments that we’ve shared, he goes and does this. He hurts me like this.
Asshole.
God, he’s an asshole. A cruel fucking asshole. A villain.
And yet I’m crying for him.
I can’t stop the tears that I just promised myself that I will never shed for him. What is wrong with me?
