Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
“So I’m not”—I twist my hand in his jacket, press my palm on his jaw—“going to sleep with you. I can’t. I can’t do that to him. You can’t make me do that to him. I can’t break his heart. I can’t. I won’t. And I…”
“And you what?”
I step up to him, my neck craned, my body stretched taut, my calves burning from standing on my toes for so long. But I need to be close to him for some reason. I need him to understand what I’m saying, where I’m coming from.
“I love you,” I declare.
And he goes rigid.
Absolutely fucking rigid.
I ignore it, though, and keep going. “I do. I love you. I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you and it fucking sucks.” I think he goes even more rigid, but I ignore it once again in favor of the point I’m trying to make. “It fucking sucks big time. It hurts, okay? Because you can’t love me back. You won’t love me back. You probably don’t even know how. So I… I don’t want to be in love with you. What I want is…” I look into his dark, glittering eyes. “I want someone to love me. I want that, Stellan. I want… No one has ever loved me. Expect my biji. No one has ever accepted me for who I am, and I-I want that. Somehow, he does that. Somehow, he loves me and I…” I lick my lips. “And you just talked about my dream, didn’t you? You’re always talking about it. My passion, my acting. Well, this is my dream too. To be loved. To love. So just… let me, okay? Don’t take that away from me.”
His eyes drop down to my wet mouth for a second.
And then another second passes.
And another.
And another.
It takes him five seconds to look away from my mouth and in that time, my lips have become stung and swollen, needy, as he says, “He loves you because he can’t not love you.” Before I can decipher those words from him, he goes on, “Because loving you is the easiest thing in the world. Which also makes it the hardest.”
“What?”
He takes in my face, his gaze molten and shiny. “You’re off the hook.”
I know what he’s saying. I know what he means, but I… I don’t know how to react. I don’t know what to say, so I tighten my hold in his jacket. “Are you… Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t think it was possible to fist his jacket any more than I already am, but I find a way to crumple it even more. “But you said I tortured you. You were so hell-bent on—”
“It’s not your fault that you have the kind of fire that has the power to melt me,” he speaks over me. “It’s my fault for trying to punish you for it. And turns out, I do.”
“You do what?”
“Care about you,” he admits albeit reluctantly from the look on his face. “You said that if I cared about you, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing so”—he swallows thickly—“I do.”
My heart squeezes. “You—”
“And I have already hurt you enough,” he keeps going, his eyes slightly narrowed, “in ways you don’t even know about.”
“What does that”—I frown, tugging at his jacket—“mean?”
“It means that you belong to my twin brother,” he says, his lips barely moving as he lets out the words, the words that I get the feeling he doesn’t want to utter. “And as much as I want to cross that line, I won’t.”
I’m waiting for it.
The relief to come.
This is what I wanted, didn’t I? I wanted him to back off. I wanted him to leave me alone, leave Shepard alone. I wanted to keep my wrongdoings a secret from my boyfriend and just move on with my life.
So then why do I still feel on edge?
Why do I feel so… miserable?
He’s doing the right thing. He’s being the good guy that everyone always calls him. So why do I hate that so much?
“So this…” I try to speak. “This is really it?”
Please say no.
Please say no.
Please, God, just say no.
“Yes.”
“You’re leaving?”
“It’s better if I do,” he says, and my grip tightens for a second. “Besides, you should go out with your friends. Celebrate. It was a good play. You wrote it, didn’t you?”
Again, I blush as I reply, “Not really, no. We did the script, but it’s based on one of my favorite movies.”
While practicing last night, I only gave him the basics of the scene without telling him about the whole plot. Turns out, I was a little shy sharing this piece of me with him. Maybe it was self-preservation, hiding that deep part of me from my blackmailer. Whatever it was, it doesn’t matter now.
I’m glad that he was here to see it.