Her mouth twitched, her eyes softened. Then she sucked her lips into her mouth, closed her eyes, and exhaled deeply through her nose.
She’d been so close to laughing.
I’d get there.
The frustrated wrinkle of her nose was all a mask.
“I just thought you should get some more practice in,” she said and gestured at me, her hand from the top of her head down to her hips at our height difference. “Seeing as I’ll be leaving at the end of the championship.”
I felt my face drop before I could stop it. “Livie would get you a job here. I need someone who speaks Hungarian. You.”I need you.
The memory of her gasping the same thing to me, lying back on that picnic blanket, head on my arm, flashed through my mind.
She shrugged and collected the paper from the far side of the printer. “Or someone who speaks Kriolu.”
My brows nearly flew off my head. “Is that why you’re annoyed? Why you left? Because I speak a language and didn’t tell you?”
Shit.
“No,” she said and shook her head, clutching the warm paper to her chest. “I left because it was the right thing to do.”
All the air expelled from my chest in a scoff. She was lying to herself.
She wouldn’t look at me.
“So you’re leaving me at the end of the season?”
“I’m leavingthe team,” she argued. “I’ve already left you.”
I stepped back like she stabbed me, the room blurring. Through my blinks, I swore I saw remorse flicker in her bright eyes.
She looked to the door, spoke, but I couldn’t hear her over the ear-piercing buzz.
And I needed to.
I wanted to latch on to every word, every breadcrumb she would leave that meant she cared. There was something here.
Her voice was underwater as my back pressed against the wall.
“Just printing the first half of translations,” she was saying to the door, a blush creeping onto her pale cheeks.
Someone replied, and her colour deepened.
Like when she’d come from my fingers.
But my body was locked down, and I couldn’t look away from her. I couldn’t move my head to face the door.
She didn’t want me. Not my broken pieces. I was made of sharp, shattered edges and cracks that ran so deep, the crevices were forever unfilled. She’d either cut herself or fall off the cliff into somewhere too dark to crawl out from.
I wasn’t worth her pain.
I wasn’t worthy of her.
Yet.
And it felt like my heart was collapsing, sprinting and trying to stay whole when it was being trampled so ruthlessly, so coldly, I was surprised it hadn’t frozen in place. Because I was allowed to hate myself, it wasn’t new.But her? Hating me?
No.
