Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 140184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 701(@200wpm)___ 561(@250wpm)___ 467(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 701(@200wpm)___ 561(@250wpm)___ 467(@300wpm)
I roll on my back and look up at the ceiling, trying not to feel choked with fear that his reassurances are just him being gentle with me.
It feels like my heart has been shot through and riddled with holes. I know that’s not his fault. The firing commenced the moment I stepped into my mother’s apartment after I left that hotel, and we’ve all taken shots at it since.
But the death blow, the loss I’m not sure I can survive…
It’s losing him.
But I can’t tell him that. He’s too good a man to leave me if he thinks…
God, I’m such a mess.
Who could ever want a mess like me?
I cover my face with my hands. The room is dark, but not dark enough. I need to disappear completely.
“Kennedy?”
The concern in his voice is like a knife through my stomach. I lower my hands and try to act like I’m not aching as much as I am.
I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can keep going just because he wants me to.
“Kennedy,” he says more insistently, rolling over and wrapping an arm around my waist, pulling me close.
It doesn’t feel good like it always has before. It feels like I’m emotionally blackmailing him into loving me, and that’s the last thing I would ever want.
“I don’t know if I should live here,” I say, my voice thick with emotion.
“Why?”
“I don’t feel the way I did before.”
Those words hurt on their way out of my mouth.
Milo is silent for the longest time. This silence feels dangerous, too. This silence is dangerous.
“Toward me?” he finally says.
That’s a lie I can’t quite get out. I want to. I love him, and I want to give him a way out of this if it’s what he truly wants, but I can’t get the words past my lips.
Tears I didn’t even notice welling up slide down my face. I’m so used to crying at this point, I don’t even feel it coming on anymore.
“Toward anything,” I whisper.
It’s not what I meant to say. It’s much closer to the truth. Another hot tear slides down my face.
Milo pulls me closer, forcing me into his chest even though I don’t want to go right now. “If you need to talk to someone, we can make an appointment.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
I just want the hurting to stop.
“I know,” he says, petting my hair. “But maybe you need to.”
The tears are still hot as they roll down my cheeks, but my insides feel cold. “My life was perfect two days ago,” I whisper. “Now, I just want it to be over.”
His grip on me tightens.
I didn’t mean to say that. I wish I hadn’t, but his tight grip feels good in a sick way. It feels desperate. I want him desperate to hold onto me, I just don’t want it to be because of what I said, and I know it is.
I want it to be because he really, truly loves me. Because he wants me.
But he doesn’t even want to kiss me.
“Tell me what you need to feel better,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Tell me any goddamn thing in the world and I’ll make it happen.”
I wish it was that easy.
Maybe it could have been the other night. We’ll never know.
I don’t say that. I don’t want to make him feel worse than he does about it.
It kills me that there’s a Granville under this roof ready, willing, and somehow equipped to give me exactly what I need, but it’s not the one I’m in love with.
Maybe that’s not even fair. I felt like I was suffocating replaying Jonathan taking me in the shower.
But that was because of the guilt, not the way Jonathan treated me.
If I didn’t have Milo, I don’t think I would have felt that way about it.
Jonathan has done everything I needed him to do, every step of the way.
I think Jonathan could give me what I need in a sexual capacity, just not emotionally. I want the domination, I want to be used and controlled by a man I can trust to be in charge. I want to be completely removed from my own power by someone who won’t really hurt me. I just want it from the man who won’t give it to me—not because he’s not interested in it, either. Milo has played rough with me before, but that was when he didn’t think I was fucking fragile.
I guess he’s not wrong; I am fragile in some ways, but I know what I can handle. I know what I want, what I need. My power has already been stripped from me, and he won’t help me take it back because he doesn’t think it’s right.
It doesn’t matter if he thinks it’s right. It’s not his fucking healing; it’s mine.