Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 103530 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103530 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“Now, can I tell you what I want?” he asked, taking a step toward me. I wanted to back away, out of instinct. To protect myself, not from physical violence because I would never expect that from Matt. I had to protect myself from his physical presence. From the aching familiarity of his body that would intoxicate me and induce me to stay, when I knew in my heart this was the best decision for both of us.
But I couldn’t make my feet move.
I tilted my head up to look him in the eyes. His swam with unshed tears. “I want you, Charlotte.”
He snagged me with an arm around my waist and pulled me up tight, crushing his mouth to mine before I could anticipate it. Before I could prevent it.
And then, it was all too late.
His mouth was as good as I’d known it would be, as soft as anything could be. I made a helpless noise, my lips parting beneath his even as my body tensed up to push him away. My hands pressed into his chest, dug through the dark hair there. I rose up on the balls of my feet as his tongue swept against mine.
This. This was what I wanted so badly. Here he was, offering it. No matter how many times we’d fucked, no matter what over-the-top sex we’d gotten into, this was what I truly wanted us to be, and I hated that I couldn’t have it. I wanted to sob aloud at the cruel reality that this wouldn’t be a happy memory. It would haunt me. It would destroy me. But I would destroy him, and I couldn’t let that happen.
It was over too soon, with me disentangling myself and looking up at him through tear-glazed eyes.
“You want me. What does that mean?” I panted, my resolve somehow renewed in the wake of that devastating kiss.
“I want to be with you. All the time.” The confession poured out of him as if kissing me, finally, had broken a seal in his heart. “I don’t want to be a friend who fucks you. I’m in love with you, Charlotte. And I want you to be in love with me too.”
Not the response I was going for when I started the conversation. I hated those words, and I hated how much my entire body sang with endorphins at hearing them.
“I…” My voice came out hoarse. A tear rolled down my cheek. I could tell him that I didn’t love him, but I didn’t want to lie to him. And without a lie loaded and ready to fire, the truth tore its way free. “I don’t know if I can be loved.”
“That’s worse than ‘I don’t love you back,’” he said softly. “That’s so much worse.”
He was right, and it broke me. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t crying, because now I was. Hard.
“Of course, you can be loved.” He said firmly, like he was ordering someone to make it so. “I love you. I’m doing it right now, as hard as I can.”
“But I can’t feel it!” I wished the ground would open up, swallow me whole to spare me the embarrassment I felt. I’d had so much fun with Matt. I wanted to keep being fun, not broken. But eventually, they all found out how broken I was.
Now was as good a time as any. Maybe he wouldn’t be heartbroken if he learned all of this stuff right now.
He stood there, hands opening and closing as though he needed to touch me. And while there was nothing I wanted more than to let him take me in his arms and make me forget my temporary sadness, there was no way he could erase the doubt that lurked in my mind any time someone told me that I was good enough, that I was loved. It sliced like a scalpel through my brain.
I wanted to believe that Matt and I could have something real. I had to protect myself from that wanting. I’d grown up in the shadow of a tremendous responsibility that I was never meant to learn about, and no matter how hard my family had tried to make me forget, to make me feel anything else, I seemed doomed to carry it around with me until I died.
And so, in the deepest part of me, I knew that what we had could never be real. I hadn’t earned the right to take up space in the world, or in his heart.
I hugged myself tight. “Matt, I’m not even supposed to be here.”
“Everyone feels that way, sometimes.” There it was. The impulse to minimize my pain.
I scoffed. Or sobbed. The sound could have been both at once. “I’m not supposed to be on this planet. I’m not supposed to have been born.”
He opened my mouth to argue again. We were back on schedule, back on ground I’d already trod before. He wouldn’t be the first person to tell me that wasn’t true. And he would think that somehow, this time was different. That he would be the person I believed.