He exhales in defeat, his shoulders drooping. “Someone loving me back.”
“Back? So it’s only a problem if you love someone to begin with.”
He blinks at me, those remarkable eyes swirling with brown andgreen, the golden flecks brighter than ever before. “Right. It’s not a problem.”
My thoughts criss-cross, tangling and banging into each other. It’s fine. I already knew this man doesn’t love me. Logic tells me so, along with his own words. But my reaction is not built on logic or sense. It bursts through my attempt at composed anger, childish, desperate words spurting out. “Let go. Let go of my heart. I want to see what I feel. There’s no risk without love on your end.”
“No.”
“It’smyheart!”
He shoves my hand off his chest and pushes me against the ledge, his body flat to mine, his hard cock pressed between us as if it had something to say. “And mine too!”
“Yours?” I try to ignore how my body reacts, how my hips press forward, how heat flashes through my chest. My hands work their way up his muscled arms, not softly, not wandering or affectionate. No, I grip him so tight my fingers cramp.
He dares a look at my hold on him. “I can’t let the second half of the curse be triggered.”
“You can’t control my heart forever.”
“I will do whatever it takes!”
Furious bubbles form in the bloody water around us, as if it were boiling, but the temperature stays the same. They take over the surface of the spring. I stand on my toes and cling to Eli, leaving space between us—necessary space with the amount of nakedness still going on. Please don’t tell me the water is finally going to do something after I begged it to take out my mother. “What’s happening?”
Eli spares a half-glance at the temperamental spring. “Nothing. Let’s go.”
I exhale my nerves. Normal Sonnet strangeness. But I don’t want to leave yet. It’s not anger that won’t allow me to let go. It’s the whole idea of it, the lack of choice. He chooses what he’ll let me feel, who I can love. And how could he possibly know what to do with my heart whenI’mbewildered by it? What if I wanted to love someone else? Would he let me?
The bubbles seethe and pop, as if enraged at their containment within the spring. They ache for more, to push past walls. Like me. Ilook away. This realm makes no sense. “I can’t believe you’ve been controlling my heart this whole time.”
He pulls himself out and passes by the first spring to scoop up our sopping clothes. I try not to get distracted by his bare skin, the wetness. He returns and tosses the clothes down on the ledge with enough force to emphasize his exasperation. “You don’t make it easy. It’s always all over the damn place and takes constant concentration.”
I peer up at him, considering his complaint as he liberates his boxers from the clump of fabric. “That’s what you were focusing on while you fucked my mouth? Making sure it meant nothing?”
He pauses with his boxers halfway up his thighs, his lips hinting at a smirk. “And other things.”
The water rises around me, nearly reaching the ledge, thrashing against the walls in angry slaps.Am I doing this?Even with Eli seemingly unconcerned, I climb out. And immediately regret it. Cold air wallops me despite the steamy room. I untangle my freezing, drenched underwear from the pile and struggle into it. Tugging my pants up is a slow torture, a welcome one if it actually served as a distraction. But it doesn’t. My heart hangs, suspended in the growing hole in my chest. “You know why this hurts so much?”
He pulls his pants into place and rubs my lips with his thumb, staring down at me as though we’re a tragedy. I refrain from biting him, a simple act to take us out of this moment. I need to face this.
“I do,” he says, and the sincerity in it makes me wonder if my heart would be tearing open my chest to reach him—if it could, if he let me feel.
I can’t look at him. I push away and crouch down to grab my bra and shirt, feeling his gaze on me as I dress myself in the cold, wet fabric, then slip my necklace over my head. I hand him his soggy shirt without looking up, and it lands at my side again, discarded. My treasures are all that remain. I stow them away in the cup of my bra and finally stand to face him.
“You can’t know because your heart is your own.” I hold my chest with both hands like a lovesick heroine with a happily ever after that makes everyone else hate their life. “It hurts because it’s exactly what I want.”
“To never love me?”
“No. I want to love you, to give you that fragile fucking piece of me, and I can’t.” Sobs interrupt my confession. Tears and sniffles and shaky shoulders. And it only makes it worse when I remember how Cam told me to never put my heart on display like this, and that she’s gone, that she never existed. That it was me, that I forced myself to turn to anger over the years. I wipe my tears with my palms and fall into his eyes, so damn deep. “Because you already have it, and you’re using it to keep me from loving you.”
The terrified look on his face is nothing compared to how the tug on his earlobe shatters my heart. But that look doesn’t last. His shoulders roll back, his face peeling away feelings faster than they showed up. He pulls my hands away from my heart and squeezes them tight, my knuckles shifting and cracking under his grasp, then flattens them to his chest, his hands fully covering mine. “I have your heart. I’ll never let it go. But you don’t have to love me… as long as you know I’m the one who’s going to fuck you then tuck you into bed at night.”
The water rises again and wells over the edges of every spring, a steady flow covering the floor, overflowing with emotion.Myemotion. And I can’t stop it.
I curl my fingers against his chest, maybe to dig through his skin and rip out his heart, solely to be closer to it. Or maybe because I feel its beat beneath my fingertips, how it syncs with mine. Or because the only response I can think of is:promise?
Chapter 37
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