He can barely look me in the eyes. “I’m sorry, Staten.”
Pain razes my chest, and my heart tries to wrench free from the corral of my ribs, desperate to crawl to him—to crawl to the only man who ever cared about me. “You’re not. You’re not, otherwise you wouldn’t be saying all these horrible things to me.”
“I never wanted to hurt you, okay? We just—we don’t mesh well. You deserve someone better.”
That single word, “deserve,” is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
I leave the shelter of my porch to face him in the downpour—a battle of wills that tests who can outlast the other. It doesn’t take long for my clothes to get thoroughly drenched, but I couldn’t care less for the state of some cheap polyester.
Standing before him, I force him to witness each second of ruination architected by his own bloodstained hands. Falling prey to the storm front reminds me of my own mortality—the one I seemingly forgot about when I was with him.
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence. You don’t know what’s good for me,” I hiss, emotion welling up in my throat. “That’s ashit excuse someone uses when they don’t have a valid reason to end things.”
I’m running on fumes. I don’t even know how I’m still breathing right now. I bury the disheartened, docile side of me to make way for pureblooded anger—the kind whose only purpose is to return agony to sender.
When Knox’s conviction is a no-show, he promptly faces the consequences. His eyes are as dark as the trembling clouds above us, harboring no trace of kindness. Those unusually bright irises of his are dull, and the air stagnates with the words he can’t bring himself to say.
Everything is happening too fast for me to process. A part of me—a part I hope is wrong—surmises that my efforts to change his mind will be futile, like throwing water onto a grease fire.
“I’m trying to save you from all my shitty baggage, Ace. Don’t you see that? I’m fucked up, and I’m not going to drag you down with me,” he explains.
“So what? You’re using your own insecurities to try and push me away? This isn’t how we resolve problems, Knox. This isn’thealthy. I don’t care about your baggage. I never cared about it. Iwantto be with you. Iwantto help carry your burdens.”
I’ve lived a thousand lives looking for him—for a partner who loves without boundaries, for a partner who’s attentive and communicative, for a partner who chooses me above all else. I don’t want to exist without him.
His hoarse voice constricts around a tsunami of unshed tears, the whites of his eyes riddled with sanguine tributaries. “But you shouldn’thaveto shoulder my problems for me. You shouldn’tneedto take care of me.”
“I don’t view it as an obligation!”
I can’t gauge his reaction. Is any of this hurting him like it’s hurting me? He’s treating me as if I’m made of porcelain, andhis hands are too big to hold me. Reckless. Prone to breaking things. But the truth is, I’ve only ever fit in his palms. He was made for me, and I was made for him.
“I guess we have differing opinions then,” he says tersely.
No dulcet words to reassure me. No noticeable guilt visible on his rain-slicked face. All I can do is stand by and watch helplessly while he punishes himself for an upbringing that he had no say in.
He doesn’t bother to wipe away the sticky massacre on his skin. “Staten, please. Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”
“You thinkI’mmaking things hard? Why won’t you just talk to me? Why are youlyingto me?” I snarl, pressing my hand to my stomach, choking back the hot vomit that settles at the base of my throat. My vision shrinks to a pinpoint, like I’m looking through the green-tinted neck of a broken bottle.
“Me? Making things hard? I heard you and Leif talking the other day. I heard what he said to you about wanting to be your boyfriend.”
Oh, no. No, no, no.
“You heard that?”
Knox doubles down. He’s never been one to stray from a fight, and I guess now isn’t an exception. “You didn’t say no.”
“I didn’t say yes, either. I said I needed time to process things.”
“I’m tired of never being enough for people. And it makes sense, you know? I’m not a commitment guy. I don’tdorelationships. I never have.”
I’ve heard that same tired script before. Never in a million years, though, would I expect it to come out ofhismouth. Forehead kissing and hand-holding aren’t things fuck buddies do. They mean something.
“But you said?—”
Knox shears away the last remains of his “gentleman act”and shows me the fangs that he’s apparently always had. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing—a predator hiding amongst prey, wearing the skin of its brethren as a cautionary warning to those who try to cross him. After all, teeth are only good for toying with the tenderized sides of necks.
“It was all an act.”
