Page 334 of Faking the Goal

Coward.

I have spent my whole life running before anyone can leave me, and now, when everything I have ever wanted is standing right in front of me, I am doing it again. Only this time, I am not running because I am afraid Kentaro will break my heart.

I am running because I finally know exactly how much of me belongs to him.

And Charlie knows it too.

"The person I care about," I finish, hating myself for making the words so small when what I feel for him is big enough to swallow me whole. "I can't let him hurt you. I don't care if I'm the one he comes after. I don't care what happens to me. But if he touches you because you stayed with me..." My lips tremble so badly that I can barely force the rest out. "That is the one thing I would never forgive myself for."

Kentaro stares at me for a long moment, his chest rising and falling with each uneven breath.

Then he sits down again.

Not in the chair this time, but carefully on the edge of the bed.

"You think leaving me would protect me?" he asks.

"I think it would give him one less reason to come after you."

"And what happens to you?"

"I'll figure it out."

A bitter laugh slips from him. "Of course you will. Because that's what you always do, right? You figure it out alone."

"Ken—"

"No." His voice is quiet now, but there is something unyielding beneath it. "You don't get to stand between me and every bad thing in the world and call it love while refusing to let me do the same for you."

"I didn't say this was love."

"You didn't have to."

He reaches for my hand again, and despite everything, I let him take it. His fingers thread through mine with heartbreaking care.

"You're terrified he'll hurt me because you love me," he says. "And I'm terrified he'll hurt you because I love you. The difference is, I'm not going to use that fear as an excuse to abandon you."

"I'm not asking you to abandon me."

"That is exactly what you're asking."

"I'm asking you to stay alive."

"And I'm asking you to stop acting like your life is worth less than mine."

His words strike somewhere deep, somewhere already tender.

He bends over our joined hands, pressing his forehead against my knuckles. When he speaks again, his voice is rough and muffled against my skin.

"You say you can survive anything he does to you, like that's supposed to make me feel better. It doesn't. It makes me want to tear the entire world apart for teaching you that surviving is the most you're allowed to ask for."

A sob catches in my throat.

He lifts his head, and there is no anger left in his face now. Only love. Stubborn, devastating love.

"I don't want you to survive this alone," he says. "I want you to live after it. And I want to be there when you do."

My heart begs me to surrender. To tell him everything. To admit that I love him so much it has turned fear into a living thing inside me, clawing at my ribs every time I imagine a world where he is no longer in it.