Tell me you don’t love me.
Just don’t go through it alone because I know youalwaysdo it alone.
“Please,” I beg in a near whisper, the sound barely audible even to my own ears.
He lowers his head, his chest rising and falling in such a depressed manner that my heart smashes against my ribs, attempting to shatter them so it can impale itself.
Tears stream down my face, and I slam my eyes shut, my heart breaking. Doubts churn inside my head, demolishing anything positive and hopeful in their path.
“It wasn’t something I just said in the moment,” I admit. “I love all of you.” The hot streaks from my tears cool against my flushed cheeks.
He doesn’t answer me—the silence deafening.
Gasping in a shaky breath, I stare at the man who’s terrified of love. I can’t blame him. I know his past. “But I can’t hold on to the hope that you might someday say it back when there’s a chance you never will.”
I didn’t think his shoulders could slump any more than they are, but they do. I just poured my heart out into a puddle of vulnerability on his floor along with the water below my bare feet.
I stand timidly, waiting. Longing for him to say something. Anything. But he doesn’t.
It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I turn away from him, retreating to the bathroom, rapidly covering my exposed skin and fragile heart with the clothes I left on the floor. WhenI walk out, he’s perched on the edge of his bed with his head resting in his hands while Rossco sits on the floor, peering up at him, concerned.
Colten doesn’t look at him either. He barely breathes.
But his complete silence speaks louder than any word could.
Message received.
Leaving him alone, I exit the house, leaving Rossco behind too. He’s an emotional support presence Colten might need more than me, so I open the door and step out into the chilly night.
Alone.
Despite the fresh air, it feels suffocating. And through the tears and blurry vision, everything around me creeps in full force. The walls are closing in, the pressure sitting on my chest like one of those bloated dead whales that wash up on the beach.
I can’t be here right now, so running back up the hill through the angry downpour, I run through the house, feeling heated gazes on me from the living room.
I just need a night to myself.
And it’s not going to be here.
FORTY-TWO | COLTEN
Words I was so fearful to hear sink their talons into my hardened soul, grasping the part of myself I’ve kept suppressed—the part that has always needed to hear them but has been petrified of the consequences. They’re clinging to the weak man, trying to get me to say the words I’ve felt for weeks but haven’t wanted to acknowledge.
Taryn said she loves me.
And I didn’t fucking say it back.
I’m not entirely ignorant. I know I love her, and honestly, I think it’s been festering from the moment her defiant spirit marched out of the office when we first officially met. I knew everything about her before then because of all the research I had done before we chose her. But having her physically in front of me was unlike anything I had conjured up in my head. The seed was planted the moment I saw her—rooted itself, and has woven its way through my veins, around my bones, and covered my heart with the invasive feeling I’ll never shake.
I glance up from my hands and meet a pair of brown eyes.
But they aren’t hers.
And I wish with everything in my broken soul that they were Taryn’s.
She left. Walked out the door after she laid everything out on the line while I’ve been wallowing like an idiot because my heart and brain are clashing for governance. They still are. My heart wants her. It’s fighting to make her mine in all the ways she isn’t already. Yet my brain understands that she’s gone.
That she walked out on me like my mother did all those years ago.
