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)
But I can’t stop the words from flowing out.
I can’t stop my own truth from flowing out as I stare up at the face that for all intents and purposes looks like the man I love but doesn’t belong to him.
“I’ve loved him since the moment I saw him. On my eighteenth birthday party. I saw him under the pink magnolia tree, and I fell. Instantly. I got obsessed. Instantly. He was just so different from anyone else I’d ever met. Any man I’d ever met. I felt safe with him. I felt like I could be myself with him, my usual reckless and impulsive self, and he’d keep me safe. I’d never felt that around any man before. Maybe it was the fact that I was wearing that provocative white dress, and he wouldn’t look at anything other than my face. Or the fact that he told me to stay away from him because he was a stranger when every other strange man I’d met has tried to get closer to me any way he could. I don’t know what it was, but I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted him to want me.
“But he didn’t. And I got so angry at that, so petty, that I came to you. I asked you to dance with me. It wasn’t my dad I was trying to piss off; I remember you asking me that. It was him. I was trying to piss him off. I was trying to make him jealous. Which is why I kept coming back. To you. Which is why I showed up everywhere you went because I knew he’d be there. Which is why I always made sure to grab your hand, laugh with you, flirt with you, because I knew he’d be watching and…
“I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop, Shepard. Even when I knew your heart was getting involved, I didn’t stop. I didn’t tell you the truth because I… God, I didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t want to make you feel what he made me feel. I didn’t want you to ever, ever go through the pain of unrequited love because I was in unrequited love. You’re my best friend and I… When you gave me that ultimatum, I made the decision to move on. From him. I made the decision to be with you and…”
I try to breathe, but my breaths keep getting caught up in my chest. Still somehow, I push on. “But I think it’s too late. I think I’m a bad person, Shepard. I think what I did, how I used you and never told you the truth… it makes me the worst person in the whole world. Because if I could do it to you, my best friend, then I could do it to anyone. I could break anyone’s trust, anyone’s heart. For him, I could do anything and…”
I grip his shirt tighter.
I twist it and tug at it.
As my vision gets blurrier and blurrier.
As my knees feel weaker and weaker by the second.
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to be bad anymore, Shepard,” I plead, my voice breaking. “I don’t want to be stupid anymore. He told me the truth. The other night. He said that… He said that it was him. That it had been him all along, but I didn’t believe him. I didn’t… God, I’m so stupid. I’m so blind. He makes me so blind. And I don’t want to be. P-please, I don’t. I want to be good.
“I want… I want to forget him. I want to move on.” I shake my head, my tears wetting my cheeks, dripping down to my throat. “I don’t want to love him anymore. I don’t w-want to love someone who’d do something like that. I don’t want to break my heart for him. I don’t want to cry for him. I don’t want to want him. I don’t…”
I’m not sure what happens, but the next thing I know, my face is pressed against Shepard’s chest. My nose is buried in his throat and his arms are around me as I sob and sob and fucking sob.
For my broken heart.
My broken trust.
For my broken love.
But Shepard keeps holding me, giving me support, giving me shelter against the shivers that are wracking my body. He’s giving me his body heat to combat the chill seeping into my bones.
The kind of chill I don’t like. The kind I don’t ever want to feel.
It’s a chill that’s colder than winter.
It’s a chill like him.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay,” he soothes and rocks me like I’m a child.
Which makes me wail harder.
That he’s being so good to me when I’ve betrayed him so badly. When I’ve been so awful to him.
He doesn’t give up, though. He keeps stroking my hair. He keeps rocking me. He keeps whispering soothing things. “Just trust me, yeah? Just trust me. I’ll take care of everything. I’ll take care of you. I’ll give you what you want.”