Impossible.
Because it was too big, too heavy and suffocating and weighted with all the limitations Lyrik continued to hang around our necks.
Because this?
This was limitless.
Forever.
I pressed my hand over my mouth and tried to choke back the sob. Tried to tamp down the burning behind my eyes as tears rushed to fill them.
God, this girl looked so young. No question, Lyrik looked young in it, too. The image had to be at least five or six years old. But the girl…this gorgeous girl who was beautiful in a seductive way? It was evident in her eyes.
Youth.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
The voice was low and dangerous and dark.
I jerked to look at him. I’d been so wrapped up in the picture I’d not even noticed he’d come back inside.
Anger billowed from him.
“Who’s this?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
How the hell could I be so insane to ask? Had I really regressed to this point? Needy with zero self-preservation?
The worst part was I wasn’t sure I could handle hearing him give the answer.
Because I already knew.
This was love.
His jaw clenched, and I could almost hear the grind of his teeth as he tried to restrain himself. “Asked you what the fuck you think you’re doing? Going through my stuff? Told you all along not to go digging where you shouldn’t be.”
He stalked forward and backed me into the counter.
I held the picture between us. “Who is she?” The question was desperate. Uttered like a fool. A fool who’d run and run and run and then turned right around and let him catch up to me.
“Not. You.” His two ugly words pierced me as if he were throwing knives.
At least that’s what they felt like when they struck me.
Not. You.
Impaling and cutting.
Excruciating.
I should have been prepared. He told me sex was all he had to give.
Because he belonged to someone else.
Slowly, I squeezed my eyes shut, praying I could keep the tears at bay. At least until I made it out his door. That’s where I’d crumble and fall. Where I’d lick my wounds and force myself to stand. Where I would refortify the walls I never should have let him knock down.
But first? I gave him one last bit of my honesty. Gently, my gaze traced his face one last time.
“I hear you.”
Then I gathered myself and strode out his door.
STEALING MYSELF, I WALKED out my apartment door onto the landing. My head was held high, that old sneer reinstated on my mouth, my lips painted the deepest red. I figured I should always be prepared for what I might stumble upon out here. Because I refused to ever again be caught unaware.
Late afternoon light glinted in my eyes. My body slammed into the hard wall of humidity.
It made it difficult to draw in a full breath.
I shook my head to clear it. Or maybe the motion was done as an admonishment. As a silent command screaming out for me to get my shit together.
I knew I was nothing but a liar if I blamed this feeling on the weather.
As if I didn’t know why it felt like there were a thousand bricks piled on my chest. As if they kept raining down from above, pelting and crushing and destroying.
I hated I’d been such a fool to give him the power to make me feel this way.
I knew better.
I knew better.
I knew better.
But it didn’t matter how many times I chanted it beneath my breath. Every single one of those feelings remained. The gain and the loss. The renewed confidence he’d given me up against what he’d so easily torn away.
It seemed cruel he was the reason for the first true life I’d felt in years. Glimmers of it were still there, trying to work their way out, the desperate urge to get back some semblance of who I used to be. To go home and be brave. Though all of that was eclipsed by the hurt balled up like a fist at the base of my throat.
It was an old pain whispering its venom.
How could you be so stupid? So careless? How could you have let yourself be used so easily? Taken and tossed out like the morning’s trash.
Dirty.
Breaths squeezed in and out of my too-tight lungs as I stood mere feet from his apartment. So close yet there couldn’t have been a greater distance between us.
The overabundance of thoughts and worries and hopes swirled around me like a cyclone. I wasn’t sure I had the strength left to stand up under the bitter jumble of emotions.
Pulled toward home while this beautiful man pushed me away.
God, this piercing ache never dissipated. Never dimmed or dulled.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t escape the unwavering sorrow that chased me through the days and stalked me through the nights.
But standing here ignited a rage of fury and hurt and betrayal so intense my head spun and my heart felt as if it literally might fail. Stutter and bleed out and usher in the end.