Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 140184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 701(@200wpm)___ 561(@250wpm)___ 467(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 701(@200wpm)___ 561(@250wpm)___ 467(@300wpm)
He’s relentlessly gentle with me despite my unrestrained anger. He pulls me down so that I’m lying on his chest. “The last thing I want to do is upset you further, but I also don’t want you to do something right now you will regret later.”
I don’t say it because I don’t want to talk about it, but I find it absolutely insane that of all the shit that’s happened tonight, he thinks this is what I’d regret.
“You’ve expressed to me before that you wanted your first time to be special, and I would hate for you to lose out on having that experience the way you want it just because you’re hurt and scared and probably a little traumatized. You won’t feel the way you’re feeling for long. It’s all fresh right now. It just happened. I am happy to lie in this bed and hold you all night. You can cry, you can rage, you can feel however you need to feel without fear of scaring me off, but please don’t ask me to take something from you that I can’t give back once this pain has passed. I love you, and I don’t want to do that to you.”
His words feel like salted whips lashing my skin. Tears well up in my eyes.
He’s right, and that makes me angry. I don’t want to hear it, but it’s also the kindest, most loving thing anyone has ever said to me. I don’t know how to process it, where to put it. Maybe I don’t know how to be loved.
Maybe I’m unlovable.
Irrationally, I’m even a little angry that he just told me he loved me and it doesn’t get to be romantic and beautiful. It’s not like I wanted it, like earlier tonight when everything was perfect, when he was hugging my tummy and that blissful feeling welled up inside me.
Right now, I’m bursting with anger, pain, and maybe a little desperation. This isn’t how I wanted to feel when we finally got to be together.
A little voice of reason tries to whisper that if I feel that way about him saying he loves me, then he’s probably right about the rest of it, too.
But I don’t want to hear it.
I can’t.
It’s not a truth I can handle right now.
I need what I need tonight, and if I regret it a little bit later, so be it. I can’t regret it more than all the shit I already regret that led to this moment.
Somehow, I don’t think that’s an argument that would convince him.
I’m going to ruin everything.
“Sometimes things don’t get to be beautiful,” I tell him.
He holds me tighter. “If he hurt you, it isn’t your fault. It doesn’t have to count.”
“I already told you, he didn’t rape me. But I almost lost my chance to do this on my own terms. I won’t risk that happening again.”
“That’s a bad reason, Kennedy,” he tells me softly, caressing the side of my face.
His words chafe like judgment, but they do nothing to change the gaping wound inside of me that needs tending to.
“I don’t care. It’s mine.”
“You’re not in the right frame of mind to make a decision like this, sweetheart. We don’t have to rush anything. We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. Just lay here and let me hold you.”
“Stop telling me what to do,” I say, pulling away from him and sitting up. “I don’t want you to just hold me. We were going to have sex tonight anyway. You literally booked us a hotel room and planned out the whole night. It was going to happen and then it didn’t because I was a fucking moron.” The last word breaks over a sob I can’t hold in. “I just want to rewind, I just want to go back to the hotel and be fucking selfish. I want to shut my phone off and say fuck her like she would’ve said fuck me, and I want—I just—I want it all back, and I can’t have it.”
I can’t breathe by the end of that.
I draw a shuddering breath and Milo reaches for me, but I’m so full of rage and remorse, I can’t be touched. Not by someone who loves me, at least.
“Don’t touch me unless you’re going to touch me the way I want you to.”
His hand stops, and my heart plummets.
“Kennedy,” he says, trying to cut through my hysteria, but I don’t want to hear him. “I know it might feel like I’m full of shit right now, but we’ll have so many other nights like that. I’ll plan it all over again if you want me to. I’ll give you tonight back. I’ll do whatever you need me to do to fix this for you.”
“Then fuck me,” I whisper.
He swallows. “Not that.”