Incipient A Dark Paranormal Romance - Bianca Scardoni Page 0,18
filled with pain and anguish. My heart sank right to the floor as it became apparent that this was the only thing I was capable of doing to this man. Hurting him. Eviscerating him. I didn't deserve to be standing beside him let alone making him feel even an ounce of pain. And that was all I had ever done to him from the moment I came into his life.
“No, it’s not,” he answered roughly, having heard my thoughts from our touching hands.
But it was. He just couldn’t remember it. “Let me go, Trace. I'm not who you think I am. I’m not. I'll only bring you heartache.” I tried again to turn the door handle, but his hand remained steadfast in stopping me.
“Then bring me heartache,” he said, moving in front of me and then lowering his face to mine to catch my gaze. “I'm not going anywhere, Jemma. And neither are you.”
The sheer conviction in his words made me falter, but I couldn’t hold on to the sentiment for very long. “Why would you want me around when all I've done is hurt you and lie to you? I’m a fucking mess—inside and out.” Why couldn’t he see that? It was plain to see from the stains of humiliation on my cheeks to the dried blood crusted all over my body. I mean, I literally just told him to fuck off and there he was, still standing beside me. Not fucking off.
“You’re hurt and mad and you need someone to take it out on,” he answered calmly, as though it were as simple as that. “I’m a big boy. I can take it.”
“Why the hell should you have to?” I asked completely dumbfounded as I tried to snap some sense into him.
“Because,” he said, looking at me as though I were an idiot for not knowing it. “You’re my mate, Jemma. It’s what we do.” The way he said it, the way he was looking at me, so fiercely and intensely, there wasn’t a single doubt in his mind that we were soulmates. “I already know I'm meant to be with you. I can feel it, and I know somewhere deep inside, you know this is where you’re supposed to be too,” he said as he slowly pulled my hand away from the door handle.
And this time, for reasons that had yet to make sense to me, I let him.
“Stay with me,” he said, his demand a soft murmur that reached out and caressed my skin.
Flashbacks of the past came rushing back to me. Of the last time he asked me to stay with him. Of how in love we were with each other. How happy we were. And now look at us. He couldn’t remember who the hell I was, and I couldn’t stop hurting him. What a pair.
“I don't give a shit about any of that,” he said, taking my duffle bag from me and then towing me back into his room and away from the door. “I don't care about what we were or what you think you've become. I don't care about your fuckface ex or your virginity or what you did in the past. I just want to be where you are, Jemma. That’s it.” His words were soft and disarming and I felt utterly unworthy of them. “I want to know who you are now.”
I dug my feet in and stopped moving. “And what if you don’t like what you find?” I asked, my fear mounting as I felt my guard gradually evaporate. “What if you’re wrong about me? About us? What if I did something so horrible and unforgivable that it changes everything?”
“Nothing’s going to change the way I feel about you,” he said and took a step closer to me.
“You say that now, but you don’t know.” I shook my head at the hopelessness of it all as a single, rogue tear escaped its prison. “You don't want to know about all the ugly parts, Trace, the broken parts, the parts that make me look like a monster. Nobody wants those parts. We all want the fantasy and none of the nightmare.”
“So, give me all the ugly, Jemma. Give me the nightmare,” he said as he wiped my tear and closed the remaining space between us. There was something so real and disarming about him that it almost made me want to pour out my heart and soul to him right then and there.