I wanted to look away. I wanted to escape the stare of an intimate object, the blame that came with it, the guilt. The incredible guilt that followed me around the country and then out of it, which I knew I couldn’t run from yet I itched to try once more. To escape. To do what I always did when the emotional going got a little too real.
I wanted to escape him too.
Even though every cell in my body rebelled against it, even though he held everything I ever wanted in his hands. Not the badge. Just him. I wanted to run. Not from him. For him. To give him back the life I’d stolen from him.
I wanted to trick myself that it wasn’t too late for him to get it back, that I hadn’t put it through the wood chipper like I had my own heart.
He seemed to sense my struggle, or at least my eagerness to escape. The lawman in him, I guessed. He knew when an outlaw was going to make a run for it. Instinct.
The silver clattered to the floor in a resounding echo and he was on me before I knew what happened. Before I could register just how pivotal that abandonment of that small piece of metal was.
His hands framed my face and his eyes searched mine. I couldn’t bring myself to hide it. My utter love for him. The love that had started out as innocent and pure and had been warped, tangled into something ugly and brutal and nothing like the movies, yet I was loath to let it go. Even if it had already begun to destroy us.
Even if we had been goners the second I’d seen him on that curb at five years old.
His grip on me, both with his hands and his eyes, made it seem like he didn’t want to let go either, even though it was bad for him. Even though I was bad for him.
“That badge used to be everything, Rosie,” he rasped. “Who I wanted to be, my reason for being.” His hands tightened at my face. “But fuck, baby, I didn’t know shit about living for somethin’. Breathin’ for something. Dying for something. Willing to kill for that something and still sleep at night as long as that something, you, is gathered naked in my arms.” He yanked us closer together so no air separated us.
“But I’m not good,” I whispered, my voice so small and vulnerable I didn’t even recognize it.
He flinched. Full body. Like I’d struck him. Like the words actually hurt him to hear. “No, baby,” he said, voice thick. “You’re not.”
“I’m not good,” I repeated in a tone that belonged to someone rocking back in forward in a padded room wearing a straitjacket. That’s who I was on the inside.
He nodded, not hearing the crazy in my tone, or ignoring it. “No. You’re not.” There was a beat, a palpable heaviness in the air at his pause. “Such a word doesn’t even fucking scratch the surface of what you are. Labeling you as one singular thing would be a gross disservice to the magnificent creature that you are. You’re so much fucking more than one side of two binaries, baby. You’re strong. Stronger than most who wear badges, stronger than most who fight those who do. You’re loyal. So fucking loyal I know you’d take a dagger for anyone you let into your life, and that list is fucking long and full of people who seem to brush with death too often for comfort. Know you’d do it for people you haven’t even met yet. You’d take the blow for anyone who didn’t deserve it just because you could. Because you would willingly and without fear be a shield for anyone. That scares the shit out me.”
Fear, true fear, danced in his eyes at his words. It shook me to the core. Because it was that life-or-death kind of fear, when something happened to make you realize how fragile life really was.
“Every day, I have this bitter taste on the back of my tongue because I know you’ll jump in front of a bullet without hesitation. Because of that thing you have inside you. That loyalty. Yet I love you for it. Your spark. Your fight. Your beauty. Not just on the outside, but the shit you got inside you. It’s worth it.” He glanced to the reflection of silver on the ground. “It was worth it. Giving it up. Whatever fucked-up me I was trying to be without you. I’d walk through fire for you, baby. I don’t give a shit about the other stuff that kept us apart. That kept me from being a stupid bastard and burying my feelings so deep I hid them even from myself. That means nothing with you in my arms. In my bed.”