His eyes burn into mine.
“You’re a walking fucking corpse.”
I try my best not to get hurt. I really do. The only way I can make it through is to shut up for a moment and let the ugly feeling in my chest pass on its own.
I don’t know why hearing it stings, but it does. It stings so much.
Then again, it’s me saying it. A part of me standing outside my skin, watching, judging, and somehow knowing me better than I want to admit. So I don’t brush his words off this time. I force myself to listen.
Was I really doing all that? Chasing life?
All this time, it felt like I was simply making the best of my situation. Like I was trying to claw my way out of the loop of misery I built for myself. I actually felt proud of it. I found love. I found happiness. I found strength.
But what if I was chasing the impossible? What if I had been slipping, without noticing, deeper and deeper into detachment?
No. I told Nathaniel he has no future with me. I didn’t chase a life with my men.
But I did chase the touch. The emotion. The thrill.
“I just wanted to experience the things that were taken away from me,” I mutter out loud. I don’t mean to say it. It just slips free, and my voice sounds sad even to my own ears.
Something shifts in Pain. The anger eases, peeling back from his face.
“And in doing so, you rejected me,” he says.
I swallow. My throat feels too small for everything piling up inside it.
“I didn’t reject you,” I whisper, and immediately hate how weak it sounds.
Pain’s eyes hold mine anyway.
“I am the things you hate,” he says. “Your death. Your wasted youth. Your… Pain.”
My fingers curl into fists in my lap.
There’s a weight in my throat, and it keeps growing, bigger and bigger, until it feels like I can barely breathe around it.
“I feel lots of pain,” I say.
“When you choose to,” he replies. “You do.”
I blink at him, slow and disbelieving, like he just spoke in a language I don’t have words for.
“That is such a…” I swallow the rest because I don’t mean to argue with him, even when I want to. “That’s not how pain works.”
Pain tilts his head, unimpressed. “No?”
“No,” I bite out. “It’s not a mood. It’s not a fucking outfit I put on in the morning. It happens. It shows up. It sits in my chest and rots.”
“And then you decide what to do with it.” His gaze doesn’t waver. “You decide whether you let it touch you, or whether you turn it into something else.”
“I don’t turn it into something else,” I say, my voice tight. “I survive it.”
“You fuck it away,” he says, blunt as a hammer. “Your three guys are real good at helping you with that.”
Heat crawls up my neck. Embarrassment, or anger. It’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins with him. With me.
“You’re making it sound like I’m some kind of…” I gesture vaguely at my own chest, at the cage of ribs that keeps everything contained. “Addict.”
