What I just felt inside Crescent House pales in comparison to the agonizing gut punch of knowing that I’m the one who’s hurt her.
And still, she wants to fight for me, despite it all. I can tell in the square of her shoulders, the lift of her chin, the pure defiance shining in her eyes as she steps into me, pressed so tightly that I can feel the heat rolling off her body.
“You can’t truly believe that about yourself? That you’re not worthy of… love?” The words tremble out of her, tears tracking her cheeks. “You’re worthy o?—”
“I cannot love you.” I grab her face with both hands, framing the sides of her head with my hands, rain running down my face as I break the only good, pure thing I’ve ever had. “I am fuckingbroken,baby. I am a broken fucking man who doesn’t have thecapabilityof loving you. Even if I wish with every fiber of my goddamn soul that I could.” I pause, letting the words sink in, praying to a God I’ve never believed in that they do. “Do you understand what I’m saying? I cannot love you. I will never loveyou because I’m notcapableof loving anything. Anyone. There’s no living, beating heart in my chest. There’s just a hollow fucking space where one should be.”
A sob tears out of her, and she reaches for me, her fingers tangling into the soaked fabric of my shirt right over the empty cage of my ribs.
“T-that’s not t-true,” she stammers, shaking her head over and over. “You have the most beautiful heart.”
“Fuck, you don’t get it, do you?” I want to fuckingdiewhen she flinches from the weight of the words. “I don’t know how to love anyone. I can’t even love my fucking self. I don’t knowhowto be loved. I don’t knowhowto love. The only kind of ‘love’ I’ve ever known is one to leave. Love that’s left me bruised, broken, and fucked-up beyond repair. That’s not the kind of love you want, Maisie.”
I wish she could feel the devastation etching itself into my bones as I say it, the pain cinching my lungs tight and making each breath feel like a battle.
Maisie’s crying harder, her beautiful face contorted with the pain I placed there.
I can’t help but swipe away at the tears, trying to erase them, even if it’s in vain.
“Wilder…” she cries.
I just shake my head. “I’ve been broken longer than you’ve even been alive. Being haunted before you were even fucking born, Maisie. You deserve the world that I’ll never be able to give to you. You deserve to be touched by a man who isn’t a fucking coward. Who isn’t ashamed of the life he’s lived. You deserve to be loved by a man who would put you above everything, including himself. And I can never be that man. I can never be the man you need, the man that youdeserve. I’ve made peace with the man that I am, but I will never ever fucking condemn you to the lifetime of hurt that I would inevitably bring you.”
Maisie’s hands curl around my wrists as they hold her, and she cries, so hard that her small shoulders shake.
It’s unbearable.
I fucking hate myself.
I fucking hate that I’m a broken, fucked-up mess.
“I’m a sickness. A fucking disease that’s going to suck everything out of you until there’s nothing left to take. You’re sunshine, Maisie. You’re everything fucking good in this world. You’re bright and so goddamn beautiful that it steals my breath. And I’d take that from you. It would be the biggest regret of my lifetime, and I can’t do it. I can’t fucking do it.”
I have to stop it, stop her before it’s too late, before I hurt her any more than I already have.
It was different when I knew that it was temporary, when I knew that it was nothing but a hookup. Something to feel good and leave behind when it was done, but now it’s gone too far.
Now, the stakes are too fucking high.
I need her to walk away and live her life with happiness, and joy, and all the things that she brings to this fucked-up world.
“The only good thing I’ve ever had in me is you.”
I don’t know what I expected after all of the shit spilled out of me just now to happen, but it’s not what does.
Maisie looks at me, blinking up at me with her big, beautiful blue eyes filled with tears, and then she shakes her head. “No.”
No? What?
“No. You’rewrong, Wilder Hawthorne.”
I open my mouth to speak, but this time, she slaps her hand over my mouth and continues. “About who you believe you are. About love. About us. About all of it. Every single part. And I’m going to show you.” Her eyes burn into me. “Because when you love someone, you hold on tighter when it’s hard. You don’t let go even if the thing trying to rip you apart isyourself. This is me holding on tighter.”
CHAPTER 51
MAISIE
The silenceinside Wilder’s truck is deafening.
