He stares into my eyes, his lips parted, his chest moving with slow but long breaths. “I think I have an idea.”
"About what?”
His lips tip up but there’s no humor in his smile. “Given how you constantly show up where I go, all dressed up and pretty. Given how desperate you look right now, to talk, to be there for me in my difficult time, there’s only one thing that you could possibly want, isn’t there?” Before I can say anything to that, he goes, “You want me.”
He’s hit the nail on the head and I flinch. “I…”
“Don’t you?”
I blush so hard and my mouth trembles so much that I can’t answer him. “I’m… I just…”
Then he goes ahead and runs a finger down my cheek. “Gotta say, it’s nice to see you doing all the work this time.”
I flinch again. “Lucas, I —”
“Besides,” he keeps going like he doesn’t want to hear what I have to say. “It’s only fair, isn’t it? Seeing howIdid all the work the last time around. Chasing you, running after you. While all you did was string me along. All you did was keep me on the leash.”
“I didn’t… Ididn’tstring you along.”
“We probably have different definitions of stringing along then.”
“I don’t –”
“When I say stringing along, Echo, I mean,” he grinds his jaw, “I didn’t get to fuck you.”
My eyes go wide at his severe, derogatory tone. “What?”
“For all the work I did for you, for all the hoops that I had to jump through, you didn’t even have the decency to open those legs for me.”
“Lucas, you —”
His eyes go harsh. “You didn’t have thedecencyto give me what belonged to me.By right.” He scoffs. “How selfish do you have to be though, that we went out for two fucking years and not once did you think about me. Not once did you think about what I must be going through.”
My heart’s slamming inside my chest.
Okay, so maybe two things.
There were two things that I ever said no to him on.
His ring on my sixteenth birthday andthis.
Taking things further than kissing and making out.
And God, what an awful time to realize that the reason I was such a pliable girlfriend wasbecauseI wouldn’t let him take things further. Because I made him wait and so I did everything to please him in other areas.
But this issonot the time for revelations and epiphanies.
I take a step toward him. “Lucas, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t —”
“Since we’re catching up, let me catch you up to the fact that it was for me though,” he says, his eyes hard. “I could’ve done it, you know. I could’ve taken it from somewhere else. What I wasn’t getting from you, and as naive as you were, you never would’ve been able to figure it out. And God’s honest truth, I was tempted. I was so fucking tempted,so manyfucking times.”
“Lucas —”
“But I kept it in my pants. I fucking kept itin.”
I flinch again. “I’m…”
“But you stabbed me in the back instead.”