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He laughs, and it’s bitter and cutting. “Oh, so you’ve gotten attached. How sweet.”

The mockery stings, but I don’t flinch. “Yes. I have.”

“Well, congratulations.” He shifts. “You want a gold star for that? You want me to pat your head and tell you you’re special?”

“I want you to stop pretending this is just sex.”

“It is just sex.” He’s on his feet now, pacing away from me. “Good sex. Great sex, even. But that’s all it is. You’re confusing fucking with feelings, Kento.”

I stand slowly. He is panicking. I’m pretty sure anything I say right now could make him explode, so I keep my voice calm and stay honest. “I’m not confused about anything.”

“Yes, you are.” He whirls on me, his eyes blazing. “You think because you put your dick in me a few times, you get to own me? You think that gives you the right to ask for more?”

“Yes, foolish of me, but I want more. I want to hold your hand in public, kiss you whenever I please, and tell anyone willing to listen that you’re mine. I want you to choose me. I want everyone to know I’m yours, too. And maybe that’s greedy of me, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop wanting more of you.”

My voice comes out so much smaller, and maybe it’s because my heart is slowly shattering, and I’m trying so hard to keep the pieces together in front of him. It’s pathetic, isn’t it? I’ve had men begging for their lives at my feet without feeling a goddamn thing, and now I’m standing here, silently begging for something as simple as being wanted.

All I want is for him to pull me closer. His beautiful eyes are burning, but I can’t read the emotion in them this time. I wish I could. I’d give anything to find even the tiniest bit of tenderness in them.

“You’re just lonely,” he shakes his head, backing toward the door. “You’re possessive and lonely, that’s all.”

The words are designed to wound, and they do.

I take a step forward. “I’m lonely, yes. I’m so lonely when you’re not with me. I miss you even when you’ve only just left. I look for you in every room, I wait for you, I count the hours until I get to see you again. I know I shouldn’t need you this much, but I do. I need you. Don’t you? Even just a little? Don’t you ever miss me when I’m not there? Don’t you ever wish I was beside you?”

His face twists, and for one hopeful second, I think I’ve reached him. Then his expression hardens, and I watch the softness vanish from his eyes like a door being slammed shut. I don’t know it yet, but I’m looking at the last few seconds of a world I thought I might get to live in. And then he opens his mouth and says the words that drag me under so completely I forget how to breathe.

“I don’t need you.”

Then he does something he hasn’t done in a long time. He runs, and drags my heart with him.

Ilya

I need you. I need you. I need you.

The words scream inside my skull even as I run from the only person I want to hear them. My chest feels like I’ve reached inside it, ripped my heart out, and stomped on the fucking thing myself. Because that’s exactly what I did. I did this to myself. Worse, I did it to him. When Kento asked me to be his boyfriend, my first instinct wasn’t to run. It was to kiss him. To grab his beautiful face and whisper yes, yes, a thousand times yes against his mouth.

And then I remembered who he is and who I am.

I’m too fucked up for someone like Kento. Simple as that. I let myself play around for a few weeks because Anton was conveniently out of the picture, and that was all it took for me to develop the delusion that I could have a normal life. But Anton isn’t going to stay away forever, and I can’t keep pretending.

Kento doesn’t even know how fucked up I really am. He hasn’t even properly seen my body yet. And I know, I know, that if he ever saw all of it, something in those beautiful dark eyes would change.

Maybe he’d pity me. Maybe he’d be disgusted.

I don’t know which would kill me faster. He says he needs me, but he doesn’t. He needs the Ilya he’s made in his head.

But that doesn’t change the fact I want to run back into his arms and beg him to ask me again.

Because the answer is yes.

I am still thinking about it when a hand fists in my hair and smashes my head into the wall.

Pain explodes white behind my eyes.

I gasp, more from shock than anything, and my palms hit the wall as my scalp burns under the grip. For one stupid second I don’t understand what’s happening. My mind lags half a beat behind my body. Then I smell him. Cigarettes.

Anton.