Somehow, the loudest thing I’ve ever heard, and it’s stifling.
I’m torn between frantically forcing my way past his walls and trying to give him enough space toletme in.
I heard everything that he said in that muddy field, over the rain and wind whipping around us, over the broken, tortured emotion lacing every syllable, over the pain in his voice.
I heard the man I love tell me that he’s not worthy of my love. Ofanyone’slove.
I heard the man I love tell me that he’s too broken, too damaged, to ever deserve a woman like me.
I heard the man I love tell me he doesn’t want to taint my goodness with unclean hands.
I heard the man I love tell me twenty reasons why he can’t love me.
But what broke my heart?
It wasn’t that he claimed to not be capable of loving me back or giving me what he thinks I deserve.
It was discovering that all of this time, these are the things he believes abouthimself. That he isn’t worthy. That he isn’t good.Thathedoesn’t deserve love. That he’s too fucked-up for anyone to love him.
That’s how I know that he’s wrong.
BecauseIlove him. Desperately. In a way that consumes me.
And if he thought all of that? That all of the things he said that broke my heart for him, not for myself, was going to be what pushed me away for the last time… he was wrong.
If he thought that I could walk away from him and let him continue to believe those things, then he has no idea who I am.
I will fight for him, even if it’shimthat I have to go through.
I’ve been quiet on the ride from the group home, mostly me trying to give him the space I think he needs to process this afternoon. But now that he’s parked in front of my apartment, the heavy silence has become unbearable.
“Wilder,” I say quietly, breaking through the thick, tense air.
He looks over at me.
“Tell me that you don’t want me.”
The thought has been colliding inside my head since we left the group home. He insisted that we get out of the rain since I was shivering and my lips had started to turn blue, but this conversation isn’t over, and we both know it.
I only obliged because Iwasstarting to shake, and it felt like after everything that was said, we needed to take a moment to take a breath.
To think before reacting when we were both so high on emotions that we couldn’t seem to get control of.
Wilder’s throat works, and he slides his hand along his jaw and over his face. “It’s m?—”
“No,” I cut him off as I unbuckle the seat belt he so tenderly belted me in with and angle myself toward him. “I’m not asking for anything else but for you to tell me that you do not want me. Tell me right now that you don’t find me attractive, that you don’t like spending time together, that you don’t want what’sbeen happening between us to continue. Just tell me that. Tell that to me right now, and I will get out of your truck and walk out of your life.”
It would destroy me.
But if he said that the problem wastrulythat he didn’t want me, that he didn’t wantthis, then I would walk away. Not just for him, but for me.
“I can’t, Maisie,” he finally says, his eyes burning into me with the same heat as the words. “I fucking can’t.”
And I already knew that, in my heart… Iknew.
I just needed him to know it too.
Wilder’s running because he’s afraid, because he truly believes the poison he’s fed himself for his entire life.
