“I can’t see you anymore.” I force the words past my lips before clamping them tight to keep myself from taking them back. I want to. More than anything. But I wait.
As the seconds tick by, the silence stretches between us, and the urge to take them back grows stronger. But I don’t. I can’t. Tension weighs heavy between us and I peer through my lashes, gauging his reaction to my admission.
His brows are furrowed and confusion spreads across his face, but what I don’t see is acceptance. “What are you talking about?” His voice is filled with disbelief.
I swallow down the lump in my throat and square my shoulders. This is the right call. It might not feel that way right now, but it is, and I need to believe it.
“I think it would be better if we spent some time apart. Did our own thing for a while.” It’s a lame explanation, even for me, but I can’t seem to get my mouth to speak all the words I’drehearsed earlier today. I should break this off. Make it a clean cut. But a part of me wants to leave the door open. To leave us some semblance of a chance.
Color fills his face and the heavy set of his shoulders stiffens. “Where is this coming from? Did Holt or someone else put you up to this?” A muscle ticks in his jaw as his confusion quickly morphs into anger. “Did he?— “
“No,” I rush to tell him. “No one put me up to this. This is all me. I…” I bite my bottom lip. “I need space.”
He shakes his head, his doubt evident, and it makes me fall for him more. Even now, he refuses to give up on me. On us. But he has to.
“I’ll back off,” he says. “I’ll stop. All of us will stop. You want me to leave Holt be, fine. Consider it done.”
We both know he doesn’t mean it. It would never last.
“I can’t be with you,” I tell him, imploring him to understand. “We’re not right for each other?— “
“The hell we’re not.” He shoves to his feet. “You and me,” he points back and forth between us, towering over me, “we fit. You know we do.”
I swallow hard, looking up at him. “We fit because I’m broken. Because you fill my cracks—” I choke on my words. Dammit. Why is this so hard? “I don’t want to be broken anymore.”
Gabriel draws me to my feet and cups my face in his palms. There’s a desperate glint in his eyes. Like he’s on the verge of unraveling. “You’re not broken. You’re perfect. You’re?— “
“No.” I shake my head and pull away. “As long as we’re together, I’ll only ever be broken.”
He flinches. “I—That’s—” His jaw clenches. He knows I’m right. He knows he’s become something of a crutch for me, even if that was never his intention.
“It’s too easy to lean on you. To stay like this. Fractured. Un-whole.” My confrontation with Austin the other day is enough to confirm that.
“Don’t do this.” His voice is ragged. “Don’t throw what we have away.” He bares his teeth and I can tell he’s biting back his words. Holding himself in check. It’s the unshed tears in his eyes that almost undo me. The last thing I want is to hurt him.
But I can’t pretend any longer.
“I don’t want to be with you.” The lie falls from my lips, my words little more than a whisper, but he hears them, and they hit their intended mark.
Gabriel flinches as though my words are a physical blow.
Rearing back, he shakes his head in denial. It’s written all over his face. He wants to fight me on this. But he isn’t sure. There’s an inkling of doubt in his gaze. It’s the same one inside of me that wonders if I’m enough. Could I ever be enough for someone like him?
Tears sting the backs of my eyes and I furiously blink them away. If I fall apart now, all of this will be for nothing. He has to believe me.
I wait for him to storm off or lash out, throwing hurtful words my way.
He does neither of those things. Instead, he grinds out one single word. “Bullshit.”
My eyes widen.
“What?”
He runs his tongue over his teeth and glares down at me. “We were fine yesterday. We fucked. I held you. Everything was perfect leading up to this morning. Something happened.”
I shake my head. Nothing happened. Not anything he doesn’t already know.
“Stop lying to me!” he demands. “What changed? This kind of shit doesn’t come out of nowhere, Cecilia.” Frustration rollsoff of him in waves, but instead of comforting him, reassuring him of my feelings, I allow the tension between us to thicken. I let it grow more and more uncomfortable with each second I refuse to answer him. There is no easy answer. Not one that will satisfy him.
