My frown deepens as his eyes widen in his frustration. Both of us falling silent as something somersaults my ribs.
His nostrils flare as if he caught his mistake too, or maybe he has, and he just doesn’t care, but I do. Iceman said my, like I still belong to him.
A familiar emptiness settles there, replacing the knots when his mouth twists in a grimace. The look as rough as it is suffocating.
His fingers flex, widening as he slowly angles them between us. Eyes flashing in warning like he can’t stand the thought of me getting any closer.
My pulse drop-kicks and I don’t understand why.
“Rory, I’m not going to touch you again until you instigate it.” Voice more calm than before but not any less hurtful.
Again, I don’t understand what’s going on with me.
“Why are you being like this?” Not understanding his emotions any more than my own.
It’s like he’s taking a handful of darts and shooting them. Throw after throw, nailing them straight into my heart.
“It’s what you need.” His jaw tenses on either side. “You don’t trust me and you’re still so messed up over everything that you refuse to see me as anything other than the enemy.”
“You are,” I argue. Fatigue clawing its way up my neck.
I wrap my arms around my chest. Doubting the blazer I left in my vehicle out of my own haste will help me now. The chill I feel all the way down to my core has nothing to do with the drop in the weather.
The other students had been smart to head directly inside. I can’t say the same for multiple reasons.
“You destroyed me,” I whisper, burdened. “Do you not understand that?”
The muscles in his jaw jump, ticcing as his head shoots to the side. He can’t look at me. Can’t stomach seeing the pain I freely give over to him.
I count each new tic, and by the time I get to fifteen, those troubled, broody eyes are back on me. I shudder at the intensity.
My adrenaline from before has crashed, washing away while he made me wait. My nerves dwindle in the same vein.
“I know what I did,” he says evenly. It’s too calm, I don’t trust it. “I didn’t tell you the truth, and I apologized then, but I’ll do it again because you deserve that. I’m sorry, Rory.”
His jaw jumps again, and when he speaks a second time, the airiness is gone. The anger I knew he’d been hiding inside fights to hold still.
Unfortunately for me, it loses.
“But don’t forget, you are the one who walked out without giving me a chance to explain.Youare the one who ended things.”
“No.” That thing inside me reignites as my head shakes. My skin burns with an inferno of resentment. He doesn’t get to play the blame game. Not about that. The sex, sure. We both partook, but not the fire.
That was all him.
“You don’t get to stand here and tell me how I reacted is wrong. That isn’t fair and you know it,” I accuse on a strangled noise.
“You’re right,” he admits.
My heart pounds. I hadn’t been expecting that.
“But don’t think for a second you can hate me any more than I already do myself.” My head tugs at his choppy inhale. “Because I do, Rory, every single day. I cut you, but every time you look at me like you are right now, I cut myself twice as deep.”
I blink away my surprise. I would have felt less if he’d slapped me.
He hesitates, shaking his head in his own disbelief as he looks to the sky. “So, yeah. That’s on me.” Tone as broken as I feel.
Our world, the one that has my sole focus, stalls. The silence powerful.