He’s wrong. It was everything.
Like so many other things that he’s done.
This bruised and battered guy. Who does the tenderest of things in the cruelest of ways.
My Bandit.
“I have questions,” I say, moving on to the next thing on my agenda.
The other important reason why I came here tonight.
With an overnight bag.
He senses the shift in our conversation, quite possibly the shift that will finally reveal the reason to him as to why I came. And he goes even more alert than before as he asks, “About?”
“How much,” I swallow, fisting my hands, “did you read?”
Of my diary.
No matter his answer, it’s not going to change that he read it. That he violated my privacy in such a gross fashion. He violated my trust. Heviolated.
Transgressed, overstepped, contravened.
But still, I’d like to know.
I’d like to know how much of my heart, my very soul, did he get to look at.
And I’m thankful when swallowing thickly, he gives me a straight answer. “A paragraph.”
That doesn’t tell me anything.
My paragraphs can go from one line to the whole page. I’m chaotic that way. And again, one word is one too many, but still I have to know. I have to know exactly how much, how many.
“How long was it, the paragraph?”
Another swallow. “Three lines.”
“And that’s it?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you do it to… Did you do it for fun?”
“No.”
“To hurt me then?”
“Fuck no.”
“Then why?’
I spend the next few seconds in agonizing wait as he simply watches me. Then, “To feel…”
God.
“To feelwhat, Reign?”
Another swallow, as if his throat is rapidly going dry and scratchy. “To feel close to you.”