“I’ve been trying to hold back my feelings for so long because I didn’t want to scare you away, but I just can’t anymore. I’m falling for you, Angel. Hard.” He took a long swallow. “I felt it the second I saw you tied to that guy in the park. Something draws me to you. You’re my drug of choice and I’m a hopeless junkie. It’s impossible for me to stay away. I have this sick need to be near you.” He closed the already small distance between us. “To touch you.” He brushed the back of his hand over my cheek.
Silent tears rolled from my eyes at his confession. My hands trembled, and I toyed with a strand of my hair to try to cover it up as I looked away.
Tell him to go.
I attempted to get my tongue to say the words, but it remained glued to the roof of my mouth as I stood popping my knees back and forth in a nervous rhythm. I couldn’t do it.
The corner of Blake’s mouth pulled in. “I knew there was something different about you, and I could always tell something was a bit . . . off. I just didn’t want to press the issue. But I suspected it was something like this for a long time now.” He hung his head. “I hoped I was wrong. Prayed for it actually. But . . .”
He swallowed hard, concentrating on my eyes again. “I want you to open up to me. I need to know the rest. Let me help you,” he pleaded. “I know you think you’re broken, but let me help fix you. I can handle what you can’t. We can do this together.” He sounded so certain.
I shook my head. “You don’t understand. And you can’t. There’s a lot that you don’t know, Blake. I’m no good. The sooner you figure that out, the better off you’ll be.” Tears rolled free as I built up the courage to do what I was about to do.
I plucked my pinky from his grasp, and looked him dead in the eye, reinforcing my barriers. “You should go.” My voice didn’t even sound like my own. It sounded automated, forced.
He flinched and hurt veiled his beautiful eyes. I looked away. I couldn’t stand to see the pain behind those eyes. Pain that I had put there. This man was putting his heart out there for me, pumping and bleeding in front of me, and I was trampling all over it.
He caught himself and strengthened his resolve. “Don’t do that. Not anymore. I’m in this with you and I’m not changing my mind. I want it all. The good, the bad and the ugly.”
I bit down on my lip to stop it from trembling. “There is no good. Only ugly. Please, do yourself a favor and just move on. Find someone else. Someone who has a heart to give back to you. I don’t have one anymore. I haven’t had one for a long time. You can’t change that.”
He clenched his teeth. “That’s not true and you know it. I can see you have feelings for me. You’re just fighting it. You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for.” He took a step toward me and held out his hand.
“Be with me.”
I couldn’t look at his pleading eyes any longer. Neglecting his hand, I turned my back on him. My heart was breaking, screaming in my chest to go to him, but I was glued to the floor, picking at my nails all the while feeling his pull behind me.
Determined, he rounded me and snatched my nervous hand in his. “Angel, I know more than you think. Your eyes give it all away. I know you feel alone and I know you have no clue what you’re worth. You can’t blame yourself for what happened to you. It’s not your fault, baby.”
“You don’t know!” I shook my head violently, feeling lost and hollow.
“I don’t need to know!” Finally letting his frustrations spill over, his fingertips gripped my upper arms.
I flinched at his abruptness.
He bent down to my height and in a softer voice, pleaded, “Listen to me.” His eyes were too intense. I tried to look away, but he grabbed my chin between his fingers and forced my gaze back to his. “I’m in this with you. I’m not going anywhere. What do I have to do to convince you of that?”
My mouth opened, but I was unable to push out any words.
Blake continued, “You’re a good person. You care about other people and their feelings. Hell, you cared about my feelings and the shit that goes on with my dad after five minutes of knowing me. You can’t see what I see, I get it. Just say yes. Let me show you you’re worth it.”
His words slapped me in the face, bringing me back to reality. My voice sounded hard, cold. “I’m not as good as you’d like to believe I am.”
“Look, nobody’s perfect, but you deserve to be happy and I can make you happy. I’ve seen it in the moments when you forget to leave that stupid fucking guard up. The smiles you forget to hide and that cute little blush that creeps across your cheeks when I get a little too close.” He swept the back of his fingers across my cheekbone. “You need to stop being so hard on yourself.”
His gaze intensified. “Be. With. Me.”
I inched forward, wanting more than anything to take him up on his offer but I thought better of it. “Look, Blake. I admit I do have some serious feelings for you, but I’m just not ready. I’m trying, I promise. I just need time to think, okay? I need to figure out what to do with all this.”
His body deflated. “Whatever you need.” He placed a kiss to the tip of my nose and pulled my hair behind my shoulders, clasping it between his hands as he rested his forearms there. “I told you I’d be here and I meant it. Just try—for me. Think about it and I mean really think about it.”