One of his hands tangled in my hair, giving it a gentle tug so my head tilted back. He dipped his chin down to look at me.
Then he said, “Al right, Stel a, I’l give you one.” Uh-oh.
One? One what? My brain asked.
“One what?” I said out loud.
“A piece of me.”
Oh dear.
He kept talking. “The worst part of breaking up with you was you lettin’ me walk away.”
My breath packed up and took a shuttle flight to the moon.
“What?” I whispered.
“It was so good between us, I didn’t think in a mil ion f**kin’ years you’d let me walk away,” Mace went on.
“What?” I asked. Yes, again!
His arms got tighter, his hand fisted gently in my hair, right before he said, “It was a test.”
His words hit me like blows, my body froze rigid then I shouted, “What? ”
“You failed,” he continued.
Effing hel . Effing hel . Effing bloody hell.
“You… are… joking,” I breathed, careful y enunciating each word.
“Babe, I hope you get that I’m prepared to fight for you but I gotta know you’l fight for me too. This shit goes both ways. This doesn’t end until I know you won’t walk away but also you won’t let me walk away. Never again.” What he was saying wasn’t quite penetrating my brain.
“What you’re tel ing me,” my voice was both quiet and weirdly scratchy, “is that if I’d asked you back, you would have come?”
The fingers of his hand not in my hair started to stroke The fingers of his hand not in my hair started to stroke my spine.
“I needed you to make a statement, Kitten,” he said softly. “You didn’t.”
Al of a sudden, I felt like crying.
I fought it and persevered at trying to understand what he was tel ing me.
“What you’re saying is you didn’t break up with me because you wanted to break up with me. What you’re saying is you broke up with me to test me?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
Simple as that.
Yeah.
A year of heartache and a simple “yeah”.
It al boiled down to that.
Tears fil ed my eyes, I didn’t want them to but I didn’t fight them either. I was way beyond fighting. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling; I just knew none of it was good.
“Okay,” I started, my voice now croaky and his hand left my hair, his other hand stopped stroking my spine and his arms got tight. “I just want to be sure I have this straight. You came into my life, gave me the first something good I had outside of music and took it away as a test? ”