I give in to her request and the moment my eyes meet hers and she’s able to read my soul, I understand that I shouldn’t have done it. I realize that I’m not that strong and that it’s useless for me to lock myself away in the dark silence. The light always finds a way to filter through. It doesn’t matter how high and solid your walls are, there’s always a crack ready to let it through. And from that tiny little crack, an entire world is able to follow it in. A world that you have refused most vehemently but one that is able to overtake you and drag you away. I’m not sure I’ll be able to find the emergency exit once I’ve been pulled in.
I try to look away before it’s too late, before her full and sensual lips call to me again. But she won’t let me. She grabs my head in her hands and forces me to look at her.
“I’m doing this for you, believe me,” I tell her. “You have to stay away from me.”
“You don’t need to protect me.”
I shake my head and squirm out of her lethal grip which has almost destroyed me and is about to push me down a flight of stairs and hurt me very, very much.
“We can’t. I can’t give you anything that you want.”
“What would you know about what I want?”
“I’ve known you since you were a child. Colors, sounds, lights. That’s what you are. And dreams, limitless dreams.”
“I’m grown up now, Aaron.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t still believe in fairy tales. You are a believer, and always have been.”
“And where’s the harm in that?” she asks wearily.
“There is no harm, Ciara, none at all. But no one ever read me those same fairy tales, you see. I’m not your prince, I couldn’t be that for anyone.”
“You can’t know that. Things could change.”
“Not for me.” I back away from her, appealing to any shred of force that may be left. “There is no happy ending with me, no happily ever after.”
Her eyes flood with tears and despite the impulse to hold her to me and tell her that I’d do anything in my power to make things different, I decide to go ahead and hurt her without holding back.
Because a wound heals with time. It leaves a scar, but it’s just a memory of something painful far off in the past. If I gave in to her, on the other hand, I wouldn’t only hurt her, I would destroy her and cloud over that wonderful light that she emits with my darkness and drowning her colors in the obscurity of my soul. It’s true that I don’t believe in fairy tales, but she does and I don’t want her to give that up because of me. I don’t want to be the one to crush all those dreams.
So, I gather my courage and look her in the eyes and throw down the coup de grace.
“I don’t feel anything for you, Ciara. I’d use you and throw you away. I’m not interested in anything more, I’m sorry, but things aren’t going to change and I don’t think you’re the kind of girl that’s good for just one night of sex. Because that’s all you could get out of me.”
She steps backwards, hurt.
She turns and runs upstairs and I fall over across the kitchen worktop trying to calm myself down, take control back over my thoughts and these goddamned emotions which are doing their best to break free from the ruins where my heart is being held hostage.
