“I’ve never shown that note to anybody, Vi.” My eyes fly to his just as he pierces me with a gravity in his gaze that, quite frankly, scares me.
“How?” I clench the note in my hand as if the reality of it is somehow different now. “Surely your family found it.”
“I never set it out. I never even told my doctor I wrote it.” He shakes his head, his eyes looking downward as if he’s embarrassed by this admission. “I’ve never told anybody. Not even Theo or Leslie.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “Why me? Why did you choose to share this with me?” My voice cracks at the end in a panicky fear that the meaning behind all this is more than I can handle.
His grey eyes lift and stare into mine with an unspoken answer that I feel like a strike straight through my heart. The vulnerability and connection in this one look blossoms beneath my chest and brings tears to my eyes.
“Why me, Hayden?” I repeat again. My body moves closer to him as if operating with a mind of its own.
His jaw clenches as he leans toward me as well, inching himself further and further into my air space. His warm breath touches the skin on my shoulder. I reach my hand out and delicately touch the leather cuff on his left wrist. He hisses softly and his eyes fixate on my hand, but he does not pull away.
Hayden Clarke has just entrusted me with the deepest, darkest part of his soul. In that moment…In that second…In that briefest flicker of time ticking away on the watch around his wrist, I do exactly what my soul is screaming in agony for me to do. What my heart is pounding beneath my chest in anticipation for.
I kiss him.
God do I kiss him.
I clutch his coarse jaw in my hands and press my lips to his in a fierce, passionate encounter. My mouth moves against his, coaxing and pleading. And, like the sway of a pendulum, his lips return my movement. It’s in that second that everything inside of me clicks into place. Emotion rips through me as we rock back and forth, and I allow myself to believe that he feels the intense bind between us just as I do. His hands wrap firmly around my waist and push me back onto the cushion. The weight of him on top of me is intoxicating and heady. My body is screaming to take him inside of me with every passing second. I move to wrap my legs around him, but he suddenly rips himself away from me.
“Vi, no. Fuck!” he exclaims, sitting back on his knees. A look of agony casts over his face as he shakes his head at me accusingly.
“What?” I ask, sitting up and looking at him in complete shock.
“We can’t do this! You don’t get it. You read the note and you still don’t get it!” He stands up and scrubs his hands over his hair and face. He begins pacing aggressively back and forth in front of me, the backdrop of the London night sky doing nothing to distract me from his charged demeanour. “Look, when I wrote that note, I truly felt like leaving would be a gift. A relief. I don’t feel that way anymore. That is why we can’t do this.”
“I don’t understand.” I sit up, folding my knees to my chest, feeling like I need to grip something against me for protection.
“I’ve only been out of rehab for a year, Vi. I need to focus one hundred percent on myself. I called you a distraction for a reason. I’m sorry if that hurts you to hear, but it’s the truth. When you told me last night how much that bothered you, I instantly put you first. I kissed you in the shop because I wanted to kiss the pain from you.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” I balk defensively.
“Yes, because I can’t put you first. I can’t put anyone else first…ever…or that fucking darkness could return.”
He snatches the note up off the ground where it fell and tosses it haphazardly beside me. My eyes fly wide. Does he seriously think that my presence in his life could cause him to become suicidal again?
Hurt. Deep. Painful. Hurt. Strikes me right in the back. It’s happening again. I stand up on shaky legs and cross my arms, turning away from him but keeping my shoulders held high. “I need you to leave, Hayden,” I demand, my voice low and menacing. I refuse to let him see how much this is affecting me. How much this is shaking me to the core.
He exhales heavily and I hear his steps approach. “Vi, you are incredible…I still want to be mates. You’ve helped me through a lot.” I recoil at the close proximity of his tremulous voice in my ear. “You’ll find better than me, and whatever we are will shift into a brief and forgettable moment in time.”
I let out a bark of a laugh as my face screws up in pain at his dismissal.
Once again, rejection fucking stings…even in the dark.
STAG NIGHT