I clear my throat. "I'm not making this about Natalie. This is not about her, and it's not about Lara. It's about you. You don't want to let me in, James. I've laid
myself out to you like an open book. I'm not requesting you do the same, but… I can't help you heal if you don't let me in."
"I know, Serena," he says, putting both his hands to his mouth like in a prayer. "That's why I want to change. I want you to help me change. I want to become the man you deserve to have at your side."
"Then start now," I say, ashamed how pleading my voice sounds. "Start by loving me."
"Don't pressure me like this, Serena, please. Give me time. Give me a chance."
"This is your chance."
"This is an ultimatum."
"Depends how you look at it," I snap.
Deep down, I'm fully aware there is no other way to look at it. This is an ultimatum; I know that. But I also know what happened last time I gave James a chance, when I left with him at that chocolate factory.
He shattered me.
Still, someone else, someone braver, would risk giving him the chance he asks for. Because if the risk pays off, magic will be my reward—the kind that only he can do. The kind of magic that pumps liquid fire in my veins and makes me sizzle with life.
But I am not someone else.
Jess's words choose the worst time to haunt me again. You'll end up in your safe little corner, where nothing risky can harm you. From where you'll never allow yourself to live. Perhaps. But living an insipid life seems so much more bearable than the mere thought of him hurting me again, of him never growing to love me. I could never live with that fear.
"Please," he whispers, watching my eyes. His image blurs in front of me—I won't be able to withhold the tears back much longer. "I will never hurt you again, I promise."
A sob escapes my lips, and I slide down the cold glass door a few inches. He promised too many times that he would not hurt me. Nothing good ever follows after those words. It's a promise we both know he can't keep.
He's hurting me already.
"Just give me time." He takes one step nearer, propping his arms on the glass behind me above my shoulders, trapping me. I push myself harder against the window, wrapping the sheet so tightly around me, it cuts into the skin above my breasts. Despite my blurry eyesight, I can see the barely contained tremor in his arms, and I can make out the hardened muscles on his neck, the pulsating veins on his temples. "I will tell you those words."
"No you won't. Not without fighting with yourself." A knot blocks the air in my throat, and my next words come out broken and weak. Like me. "And you're not ready to have that fight. Look at yourself."
"I want to fight for you."
I smile, reaching out to caress his cheek. "Love shouldn't be a fight in the first place, James."
He grabs my hand in his, kissing my palm. "I'm sorry I'm not more than this. But I want to become more for you. I need you to take that chance with me."
When he told me, on our first night here, that he wanted to change, that he wanted to become more, I believed him. So much that I wanted to take a chance with him, even though taking chances terrifies me. I wanted to do it. For him and for me. But if I don't even have the certainty that he loves me… I have nothing. We have nothing. I can't take chances on that.
He presses my palm to his cheek as if wanting to meld with me. I think he knows what I'm about to say.
"I can't, James. I'm sorry."
He closes his eyes, kissing my palm again, then lets my hand fall. "Of course you can't. I don't blame you. I'm a risk taker, and even I wouldn't bet on someone like me." He takes a deep breath, straightening up. "You… you deserve someone who can give you the certainty you seek. It was selfish of me to ask you to do this. If I'm being honest, I expected you to tell me you wouldn't stay with me before I set up things for us here. But I kept hoping. I should have given you more time to think. I'm sorry."
I don't know why I am not crushed. Why I am not crumbling to dust, even as the weight of his words looms around me, poisoning the air I breathe. And then I realize what protects me, like a layer of ice. A thin one. But I'm grateful for it.
Shock.
At how resigned he sounds and looks. He recites the words as if they were mere facts that led to the logical conclusion that two people as different as we are cannot find a way to be together. He kisses my forehead, his lips melting my feeble protection in one shattering second. I catch a whimper before it escapes my lips. When he pulls away, there is a flicker in his eyes. It tells me that he, like me, is about to break apart any moment now.
"I'll leave you alone to change."
The reception desk is empty, so I just call a cab by myself then wait for it in front of the hotel, glancing over my shoulder every other second, my mind terrified that James will come out. But there are other parts of me—those that crave his touch at night and those that hurt and need his healing words. And those parts desperately wish he would do just that. Come out, take me in his arms, and whisper that he loves me. But he doesn't, and his absence claws itself through all parts of me, torturing my skin and burning my insides. It's like a poison, his absence. A devastating poison, with the power to burn me alive from the inside out, one cell at a time.