She made the loud noises in my head quiet.
She made the beast inside me slumber.
She made the darkness circling me abate.
“Nix,” she whispered, slowing the kiss.
“I’m here, B. I’m right fucking here.”
Wetness coated my cheeks, confusing me. I pulled back slightly, touching my head to hers. My heart was a wild beating thing in my chest as I stared at her. Took in the tears, her broken expression.
“B-B?” I choked out, wiping away the tears with the pad of my thumb. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“This was a mistake.” She stepped back, inhaling a ragged breath.
“A mistake?” My voice turned cold, my blood like ice in my veins. “Because you’re too good for me now? That it?”
She stared at me, shuttering her expression. Refusing to let me see what really lay there in her green eyes.
“This was a mistake,” she repeated, folding her arms over her chest, and touching a finger to her lips. Prodding. As if she was trying to remember if it had been real or not.
It had been real; the most fucking real I’d felt in weeks. Months. And she was going to pretend like it didn’t matter.
“So that’s it, huh?” Dejection coated my insides. Thick and sludgy, it filled my chest making it hard to breathe. “You don’t even want to hear my side of the story?”
“I…” Hesitation flickered in her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. Too much has happened.” Her gaze dropped to the ground. “We can never go back.”
I wanted to roar at her. Beg her to listen. To hear me out. But I wouldn’t… I couldn’t.
Not yet.
“The past doesn’t define you, doesn’t define who you are,” I said. “That’s what you used to tell me.”
When I’d turn up on the door sporting another bruise from my father that’s what she’d say to me. Always trying to remind me that I wasn’t like him, that I would never become him.
“And it doesn’t.” She met my heavy stare once more. “But this is different. We’re different.”
“So that’s it? You just want to pretend like this didn’t happen?”
“It shouldn’t have happened,” she said quietly, barely meeting my eyes.
“Such pretty lies, B.” I closed the distance between us, reaching out to snag a strand of her hair. She pressed her lips together, refusing to answer. “It was always you, B,” I admitted. “I know things are fucked up. I know I messed up… but so did you. This isn’t over. We’re not over. We’re not—”
“Yo, Nix. We need to go.” Zane burst through the trees, pale and wide-eyed.
I jerked away from Harleigh. “What happened?”
“Chloe.”
“Fuck.” I dragged a hand down my face.
“Kye needs us, man.”
I glanced back at Harleigh, and her lips parted as if she was going to say something. But she thought better of it, snapping her lips closed.
Say it, I silently implored. Ask me to stay.
The words never came though. She just stood there, expressionless. Frozen. As if we hadn’t just devoured each other with our teeth and tongues.