I recoil. I physically recoil at her words.
“This isn’t about us,” I say stiffly, trying to shut down her attempt to reroute this discussion.
“It’s always about us, Ty.” She steps forward and grabs my shirt, dragging me towards Harriet's diner. “We’re sorting this shit out right now.”
Grabbing her wrist gently, stopping her.
“No.”
Roxie stops and her eyes lock onto where my hand’s touching her. The softness of her skin under my palm takes me by surprise, but I don’t let it show.
I can’t.
If I do, she might move away from me quicker and I… It’s been so long since I’ve felt her like this.
“Ty, it’s hurting me,” she whispers.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I just don’t understand. And going on, pretending like it’s fine? It’s torture.”
“I know.” I do know. It hurts me every day. Every hour. Every second. I’m in agony because… All I want is her. But to save her, I… I can’t expose her to the possibility that I might hurt her.
Again.
She looks at me as if I don’t feel every shred of pain that she’s feeling. Like it doesn’t feel like a punch to the fucking sternumevery time she brings a guy around, or a jab to the jaw when she smiles at anyone but me. Like it doesn’t make me want to cut my own eyebrow open from a hook to the face every time she looks at me, and I see the pain I’ve caused before she can mask it.
“You don’t know–” I start to tell her just how much I’m dying inside too, but she cuts me off.
“If you tell me one more goddamn time that I don’t know what you had to do, that I don’t know whatever, I’m going to smack you.” Her fists clench at her sides and my heart rate kicks up.
Maybe a fight is what we need.
Maybe I need to let her say everything she’s feeling rather than her trying to ignore it.
Maybe… Maybe being hurt on the outside will help it hurt on the inside a little less.
I pick each word carefully and speak with intention. Like she deserves.
“You don’t know what choice I had to make. For you, for me, for us.” Standing my ground, and preparing for a blow. “I did what I had to do.”
“No, see that’s where you’re wrong,” she snaps. “You did what you thought you should, but we were a team, Ty. A fucking partnership. Damn it, Ty! We’d agreed not to do this kinda thing! Didn’t we? And now,” she keeps going, letting it all out, and I stay silent. “And now, you won’t even tell me what happened. You won’t even tell me…why. You just,” she shakes her head and tears line her eyes. “You shut me out. You say some shit at The Underground, you hurt me badly, and… And then you protect me? You don’t kick me out of the shop. You don’t apologize for it, don’t think that has escaped my attention. And most of all, you don’t want me anymore.”
With everything she’s noticed laid out in front of me, I clench my jaw a little more.
“Just tell me. I can take it.” Her hands relax and instead of curling her arms around herself, like she’s trying to hold herself together.
I have a choice to make here.
Do I tell her everything and hope she doesn’t look at me differently, hope I don’t snap one day and am so used to killing that I hurt her too?
Or do I twist the knife a little more and know for a fact she stays safe?
Fuck my life.
CHAPTER 39
WatchingTy think through my question is physically painful.
