Page 39 of It Destroys Me

There was a gentle thud as he placed the gun on the desk.

I couldn’t see him because I chose a chair that faced the opposite way, my hands on my knees.

He came around the chair and stared down at me.

I kept my eyes on the coffee table. I’d never been more scared to look at him.

After a moment, he sat at the edge of the coffee table, elbows on his knees, his eyes unreadable.

“I didn’t want to tell you.” I wished I’d never said it to Bolton. Should have just hung up. Why didn’t I just fucking hang up? “Especially not like this.” My eyes moved down to the rug beneath us because I was too much of a mess to look him in the eye. I’d felt so secure in our relationship minutes ago, and now I felt it shatter.

“Sweetheart.” His voice was gentle, with a hint of remorse.

I didn’t look at him.

He didn’t grab my chin like he did before. He let me be. “It’s my fault. I should have trusted you.”

Instead of him being calm and understanding, I expected him to be distant. So distant he was an island off the coast.

“I’ll get you a new phone. Don’t answer blocked calls anymore.”

I hadn’t expected the conversation to go well, but I was somehow still disappointed. My eyes lifted to his.

They were already on mine, like they’d been there all along.

“I was angry that you spoke to him at all, and I lost my temper.”

“I don’t know how a man like you could possibly be jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“Then what are you?”

He was quiet for a while. “Indignant. Because that man doesn’t deserve to look at you ever again, let alone speak to you. He should be dead right now, but he lives because he’s a rat in a sewer and I don’t chase rats. If he were a greater man, he would meet me face-to-face under the eyes of David, and we would carve each other like pumpkins until one of us bleeds out first. But he’s a fucking coward, a coward who didn’t deserve you in the first place. I’m indignant that you spoke to him because he’s so fucking beneath you. You should have hung up the second you heard his voice.”

“I—I froze. I’m sorry.” It was a wild moment, and I was scared and my ass was sweating. “I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for me outside. Or if he already had you and wanted to make a trade… I didn’t know.”

He stared at his hands for a while, his knuckles locked together, before he spoke again. “It’s okay.” His eyes lifted to look at me again. The hardness of his stare had softened noticeably, like a knife that had been dulled by time.

“I don’t want to lose you.” Even when it seemed like things were better, I knew they were irrevocably different. Before today, our relationship had possibilities, but now it was weighed down with obligations. I told Theo I loved him, and now he was tasked with reciprocating or rejecting that love. I already knew what he would choose.

He held my stare with his intensity. “I’m right here.”

“I don’t want to scare you away.”

“Sweetheart, I don’t get scared.”

“You know what I mean.” He could walk through bullets and knives unscathed, but words were invisible and impossible to dodge. They hit him everywhere, all at once. “I told him if he ever loved me, he would let me be happy. I don’t know if I started a fire or if I put it out.”

He seemed unencumbered by the weight of my words. I didn’t say I loved him again, but I shared that I was happy with him…and he was the one I wanted. “Neither. You kicked the hornet’s nest.”

“I’m sorry?—”

“Don’t be. Maybe now he’ll show his face.”

When I came home, it was past seven.

I wasn’t sure if Theo was there. Sometimes he was gone for the night. Sometimes he was in his room. After my revelation at the gallery, I suspected he would be out until morning. A good excuse to avoid my tentacles until morning.