“That’s not fair,” I ground out, standing up on shaky legs. “I’m not exactly proud of it, but I was fucking rolling that night. I didn’t plan for that to happen and we weren’t together at the time.”
“We aren’t togethernow,” he bit back. The comment drove straight through my sternum. I understood logically it was just the truth and not thrown out to hurt me, but it did. Fuck, did it hurt.
“Why not?”
The question rushed out on a rough whisper. Dawson’s eyes flared in surprise before his face fell, regret lining his features. He abused his bottom lip while avoiding my gaze and my heart sank further than I had at the bottom of that lake.
“You know, there are times when I look at you and all I see is that loud, wild-haired boy who used to bribe me with sour skittles to play my guitar for him and sang along at the top of his lungs. The one who drew a Freddie Mercury mustache on me the night before my recital when I accidentally fell asleep beside him in the hayloft.”
Pressure built behind my eyes and stung with tears. Vivid memories assaulted me and I mourned for the boys we were. They had been so happy, blissfully ignorant of just how much they stood to lose.
“But then there are times where…I don’t even recognize you anymore,” he confessed thickly. Those cornflower blue orbs rimmed with red and I ached to go to him. I wanted his arms around me again to hold me together before I fell apart.
I opened my mouth to respond, to promise him that I was still the same Theo he knew, the one he loved. But my throat locked up, sealing the words away as though my body protestedthe lie. I wasn’t the same. I’d told him as much. I couldn’t even be sure that version of me was the real one, or if this fragmented, labile mess was who I was always meant to be.
“I would have given anything to get you back after you left. I spent night after night in that barn waiting for you. I screamed at the stars to bring you back to me. I promised my voice, my instruments, my goddamn soul to whoever the fuck was up there in exchange for you…but you never came back.”
The anguish in his words cut to the bone, tearing through nerves until I was shredded and ruined. His face was wet with tears that mirrored my own.
“The worst part was that when you finally came back, I realized it wasn’tto me.You were back, but you weren’t mine. And I made peace with that. You didn’t leave me much of a choice, but I did it.”
“I am yours,” I grated out. I stepped towards him only for him to retreat even further away.
“But you’re not,” he smiled sadly. “You’re holding something back from me. I don’t know what or why, but I do know there’s something.”
“I’m not,” I swore, yet it didn’t even sound convincing to my own ears.
Dawson let out a long, exhausted sigh, his shoulders sagging under an invisible weight. A weight I placed there with my secrets. A dull buzz of an engine drew our gazes to the lake and we saw Bash and Nate making their way towards us on the jetskis we’d abandoned.
Dawson ran his fingers through his hair, looking more defeated than I’d previously seen him.
“And that lie right there should answer your question,” he replied dully. He pinned me with glassy, miserable eyes. “What’s even sadder about this whole thing is that it didn’t have to be this way. You’re your own worst enemy, Theo.”
I was cemented in place by the raw truth in his words. Dawson couldn’t even begin to understand how right he was. This hell was of my own making. There was no outside force, no man or woman that was as much a threat as the one that lurked inside me.
Everything I truly had to fear was in every fiber that made up my body. My own being worked against me, an enemy within my veins.
Sometimes there was no battle like the one fought within your own mind.
Chapter 17
Theo
The pill bottle seemed heavy in my hand as I twirled it around, working up the courage to open it. I had fought this for so long that willingly going back to it was fucking with my head a bit. There was always a rough adjustment period for me, but I’d been through this enough to know what the first wave would bring. Oddly enough, the nausea and dizziness were something I could deal with within reason. The diarrhea was…highly unfortunate, but the hand tremors tended to be the worst. It was like a physical reminder of how out of control I truly was. But I wasn’t backing down.
Dawson’s fear and anguish yesterday were bad enough, but it was his parting shot that had struck me like a blow to the chest. Things didn’t have to turn out this way between us if I could just learn to get out of my own way. I wanted to fight for us, to silence the malicious voices in my head that said I wasn’t good enough and win him back. And clearly I couldn’t fucking do that with my brain left to its own devices, so it came down to this. The pharmaceutical leash meant to rein in the excesses of my nature.
I fucking hated it though. I felt like a wild animal thrown into a cage designed to keep me safe and contained, but without the freedom to breathe. The medication created as many problemsas it solved. However, I was willing to do whatever it took to earn Dawson back. He deserved a stable, reliable partner, and I couldn’t be that for him when my brain was a yo-yo of reckless impulses and sinister notions.
So stop being such a pussy about it and open the damn thing. It’s not like it’s fucking arsenic…
Dad’s footsteps coming up the stairs made me jump and I quickly dropped the bottle into the drawer of my nightstand. I whirled around just as he appeared in the doorway.
“Hey, I was about to run some errands and figured I’d grab dinner on the way back. You good with pizza?”
“Yeah, sure. Hawaiian for me.” I prayed that my voice sounded steadier to him than it did to my own ears.
Dad made a disgusted grunt. “Where did I go wrong in raising you?”
