Page 156 of Mad Girl

“You know what your problem is?” he asked, head shaking. “You’re too busy listening to the little voice in your head that says you’ll never be good enough to pay attention when someone’s sitting right in front of you, trying to tell you that you are good enough. To me? You’re everything. I love you.”

You’re everything. It touched that terrible ache inside me—still tender and throbbing, all these weeks later—created by you. “It’s a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“I need an explanation. Not any of that perfect bullshit you tried to sell me before—because I know it’s not true.”

He gave me a look. “I never said you were perfect. You’re far from that. I said you’re perfect for me.”

“But think about all the times I’ve hurt you, Michael. All the times I’ve screwed up. All the times⁠—”

“Don’t do that,” he said, gaze flashing bright.

“Do what?”

“Self-sabotage. Destroy. Ruin. For once in your life, will you please allow something good to happen to you? I forgave you, Elliot. I forgave you a hundred times—in a hundred different ways—and I keep forgiving you. You don’t have to be perfect for me to love you. You don’t have to do anything to deserve it. But, for the record, I love you because you don’t take anyone’s shit. Because underneath that badass persona you try to give off is someone who cares too much and loves really hard and cries at the sappiest stuff. For someone as cutthroat as you are—and I do mean that literally—you have the softest heart, and I love how I’m one of the few people who gets to know that about you. Who gets to see it. Who gets to see you cry and squeal over videos of, like, baby lemurs and shit.”

I laughed, tears rolling down my cheeks. You see, this was exactly the kind of reassurance I needed—after the humiliation of begging Sienna, the humiliation of being rejected by you, and the devastation of Bree saying all that stuff about my dad.

Sometimes, it felt like Michael loved me better than anyone. Sometimes, he made it possible for me to believe that maybe, deep down, I was good—not good like the rest of you were, but good enough. And when a person makes you feel like that—like you’re truly loved, despite all your flaws—being with them feels like the right thing.

“What about the pain stuff?” I asked.

With his thumbs, he brushed the tears from my face. “It doesn’t bother me,” he whispered. “You know that.”

“It did when you accused me of using you to punish myself.”

“Because I’m afraid”—he swallowed hard—“that’s all it was. That that’s all you wanted from me at the beach. The pain.”

“Of course it wasn’t.” I pressed my fingers to the Braille-like scar on his neck—the one I’d left all those years ago, when I’d stabbed him. “You know why I can’t let it go? Because you’re one of my favorite people in the whole world, and I nearly took you out of it. You’re the only person who’s ever been completely honest with me, and sometimes it feels like you’re the only person who’s ever loved me unconditionally. I love that you don’t take shit from me. That when you let people in, you let them in fully. That you forgive so easily, even when forgiveness isn’t deserved. I’m so thankful my dad knocked up his college girlfriend just two years after your dad knocked up his college girlfriend, and we got to grow up together.”

We smiled at each other.

“And if you ever take this away from me”—I stroked his lip once more—“I’ll die. I need it. It’s the only way I can be sure you’re still here with me. I love you.”

When Michael kissed me again, I deepened it, pulling him with me as I fell back on the sofa. He yanked your cardigan down my shoulder and his hand roamed freely, his teeth grazing my goose-pebbled skin.

And there was definitely something to this—to the mix of pleasure and pain, and the chill in the air, and the heat emanating from him—that set my whole body ablaze and muddled my thoughts and made me willing to forget everything. Including you, sleeping two floors up, and all the complicated things I felt for you. It didn’t matter. That’s what you’d said: “It doesn’t matter.” So I convinced myself of it, too.

Upstairs, as the grandfather clock chimed one, I bit my bottom lip to keep from crying out when pleasure collided with pain, Michael’s teeth deeply embedded in my shoulder.

Afterward, I drifted upstairs and snuck into bed beside Bree, careful not to wake her as I adjusted my pillow.

Her arm snaked around my waist, and I froze.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, pressing her lips to my ear.

When I didn’t respond, she dragged her nose down the side of my face and whispered it again.

Still, I stayed silent.

No one—other than Michael—knew how to hurt me like her. How to take the truth and stab me with it. How to make it burn.

Bree turned my face to hers, eyes shining bright in the snowy light pouring in through my windows. “Forgive me,” she murmured, stroking my cheek with her thumb. “Please.”

I didn’t want to, but the next few days would be unbearable if I didn’t. We were snowed in together, after all. So I covered her hand with mine, nodded once, and forgave her, anyway.