Page 81 of Bruised

“You. I want you.”

“Well, you can’t have me. At least, not in the way you want.” He rolls onto his back and looks up at the ceiling, as if I’m a nuisance he can’t wait to be rid of. As if he’s thinking that if I’m not willing to sleep with him, I hold no worth. That I’m stupid for even thinking otherwise.

Am I? I don’t know. Maybe I misjudged the whole thing. Maybe I was foolish to hope Mason felt the same as I do. I was foolish to catch feelings when I shouldn’t have, and now I’ve ruined what little we had left.

Tears burn behind my eyes, but I refuse to let them spill. I won’t give him that satisfaction.

Part of me thinks he’ll try to stop me when I crawl out of bed, but he doesn’t. Not even when I have my hand on the door handle and glance back at him. He doesn’t look angry. Not annoyed either; he just looks… sad. Hurt, just like I am. He turns to face the wall, curling in on himself. Shutting me out.

Hands clenched and eyes filled with tears, I open the door to his room and leave, and for my own sake, I hope it’s the last time.

28. NOT HIS HEART

After Lane closes the door, I lie in silence for hours, staring up at the ceiling in a daze.

Great job, Mason. You chased him away. Happy now?

Hell no. I doubt I’ll ever be happy—not after seeing that broken look on his face when I shut him down. I treated him like a naïve kid when I’m the one to blame.

Why couldn’t I have just told him the truth? That I feel the same, but that it makes me want to crawl out of my own skin or jump from the nearest rooftop, so we can’t be together. That I’m sorry.

He was just supposed to be a way for me to pass the time, but he turned out to be a lot more than that. I started to rely on him, and that was fucking terrifying. I tried to tone it down, dismiss him and any feelings I have, but the more I tried, the harder it got, and in the end, I ruined everything.

I don’t want to let him go. I don’t want him to find someone else—why the hell would I want that? I want him to myself, all of him. But I can’t give him all of me in return, so I don’t deserve to have him at all.

I’m too closed off and mean. Too insecure to be kind.

Lane wants me softer, but I don’t know how to be soft.

I thought I was good for him, that I knew what he needed, but I know nothing of the sort.

I still want him; I still feel for him. I just don’t know how to express it, and instead, it all comes out in possessiveness and my dominant bullshit rather than… rather than…

My throat tightens, and I suck in a shallow breath, hiding my face in the pillow.

With my one-night stands, I avoided catching feelings with no effort. I didn’t come close, not even once. At any sign of tenderness beyond a casual fuck, I ran as fast as I could, and now I know why.

Feeling like this hurts, and now I’m making someone else hurt, too. Why couldn’t I just admit what he means to me? Would that be so hard?

Yes. Yes, it would be. I can bench three hundred pounds and barely break a sweat, but I’m not strong enough to say what I truly feel, and now I’m all alone. Maybe it’s just as well; I don’t deserve to have him. He deserves someone who can give him all of themselves and accept all of him. Someone who’ll bruise his body but not his heart.

What am I supposed to do tomorrow? We live together, at least for now. How am I supposed to meet his eyes if we run into each other, knowing I hurt him and made him cry? Everything that used to be fun about staying in the same house now makes me want to punch a wall. I can’t stay here.

Groaning, I turn to my side and unlock my phone. It’s two in the morning, but I text Tess anyway.

“Hey, you up?”

“Yeah, why?” she replies.

“Can I crash at your place tonight?”

There’s a pause, and I imagine her rolling her eyes as she types, “Fine. Just got off my shift.”

I sigh in relief. Problem solved, at least for now.

When I get up and try to look for something to wear, I feel like I’m moving through mud. Everything feels shitty, like I don’t even know the point of it all anymore, and I have no one to blame but myself.

I take a couple of deep breaths and steel myself before I open the door to Tess’s apartment. She’s always had a knack for making me say stuff I didn’t plan, and just this once, I want to hang out as if nothing’s wrong. Like the good old days, before I laid ruin to my life and landed in prison. Before I met Lane and knew what it was like to hold him in my arms and have him smile up at me. Before I destroyed everything we had—everything we could have had.