because I’m sick and can’t filter my words or that I’m just too fucking tired of the back and forth, but I don’t regret the words when they come out.
If it’s madness, I might as well indulge.
Naomi’s grip tightens on the pad and she visibly winces. Good. At least she recognizes what her actions have done. I hope she burns inside hotter and darker than I fucking do.
“Sebastian…”
“What, Naomi? What do you have to say?”
“Nothing.”
“Fuck that. I’ve known darkness since I was six years old and I learned early on not to fight it and, eventually, I learned to blend with it. Being black was fine, even if it felt empty. Then you came along, and I wanted fucking gray. Now, I’m just colorless, so don’t sit there and tell me you have nothing to fucking say.”
Her lips tremble. “I’m sorry.”
“Your apologies don’t give me back the years I’ve lost, so fucking save them.”
“I lost those years, too.”
“Doesn’t look like it.” I motion at her bare ring finger. “Did you think hiding it would make me think of your marriage any less?”
She goes rigid, her hand tightening on her sketchpad and discomfort turning her skin sickly pale. I should stop, should shoo her away and reunite with the bitter asshole I became seven years ago and start a self-pity party, but I don’t.
I can’t.
I’ve already ripped the stitches open, so I might as well bleed out properly this time.
“Do you love him?”
She swallows again, runs her fingers on the pad again, avoids eye contact fucking again. “It’s…complicated.”
“There’s nothing complicated about a fucking yes or no question.”
“I need him,” she murmurs.
“So that’s a yes.”
“No! Sebastian, please don’t go there. Take that as if I’m begging you. Please.”
I want to go there. I want her to say the words that will put me out of my fucking misery. Whether they kill me or free me, I’ll at least have some sort of closure. That’s all I needed all this time. That’s what I searched for during all the fights in the bars—a fucking finale.
But maybe I don’t want closure.
Maybe being colorless isn’t so bad, after all.
Or, most probably, this cold is messing up my thinking process.
I lie on my back and she releases a long breath, sniffling.
I close my eyes and soon after, she lies in the nook of my body, her arm wrapping around my shoulder.
It’s tentative, her touch, as if she’s scared of my reaction. And she should be. Why the hell does she keep trying to touch me this intimately even after she broke us to fucking pieces?
I stiffen, but I don’t attempt to peel her off me.
Naomi must’ve taken it differently because she burrows her face in my chest, her breathing shattering against my skyrocketing heartbeat.
“Don’t touch me,” I say without opening my eyes.
“Please let me. Just this once.”
“I said don’t touch me, Naomi. When you do, I picture these fucking hands on him and your face buried in his chest. When you do, I imagine your scent clinging to him and his on you, so don’t fucking touch me with the same hands you touch him with.”
She shakes her head in my chest and I feel the wetness of her tears on my T-shirt as her tiny gasps fill the air. “Just a moment…”
“One condition.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t go back to him.”
“W-what?”
“In the morning, stay here. Don’t fucking go back to him.”
Her leg hooks over mine and she snuggles closer so her whole body is looped around mine.
I turn around and hug her.
For the first time in seven years, I sleep without nightmares of Naomi turning her back on me.
33
Naomi
I go home.
I step on my fucking bleeding heart and leave.
The tears came as soon as I was out of Sebastian’s apartment and they were there during the whole drive home.
But no matter how much my heart begged me to turn around and return, I just jammed the knife in deeper and didn’t listen.
Last night was magical, peaceful, and a little bit painful, too. It was the first time we didn’t have sex, but he’s never been as deep inside me as when he talked to me and hugged me.
He’s never felt as close as he did in that moment.
Everything that happened might not be perfect, but it was ours and I enjoyed every second of it.
But like any magic, there’s a timeframe for the spell to run its course.
I reached that moment.
When Sebastian told me not to go home, I wanted to say yes, I wanted to make a small