The Price of Inertia (The Seven Sins #4) - Lily Zante Page 0,96
you to be angry with me.”
“You have that effect on me sometimes.”
I clench my jaw. I haven’t come here to have sex, but I also don’t want to get into a conversation about what we have. I don’t need the drama. I’m a fucking writer, and there’s plenty of drama in my head all the time. I certainly don’t need any more.
I want to rest and lately she’s the only one who allows me that luxury. She’s the only one who gives me that place of calmness. “Can we talk?” I want to lie down and have her cradle my head. I can’t explain to her how revisiting my home was a mistake. It’s shaken up all manner of dirt and silt. I wish I hadn’t revisited the past.
“Talk? Now you want to talk?” She tilts her head as if she doesn’t believe me, as if I have something else in mind. “What do you want, Ward?” She opens the door and walks away, folding her arms as she hovers by the wall, nowhere near the bed.
I walk in. “You’re angry with me.”
“You only come to me when you want sex.”
“That’s not entirely true. I came to you the other night.”
“And you left halfway through the night.”
“It was almost morning,” I protest.
“That’s just semantics and you know it.”
My mouth twists, but I am cautious of saying the wrong thing, especially because I have no idea what I want any more. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”
“You can’t rent me by the hour,” she cries.
“That’s not how I treat you.”
“I never know where I am with you. One minute you want me, you need me even, and then you feel guilty and you tell me you need your space.” She glares at me. I hover around the bed, then move away, slipping my hands into the pockets of my sweatpants, unsure of how to be.
“What do you want, Mari?” I ask her, against my better judgement. As if I could even give her the thing I suspect she wants. I learned a long time ago that people are not to be trusted, especially the ones you come to rely on and trust the most.
“I don’t …I …” She stumbles on her words, and I sense that she, too is being careful. “I don’t, I won’t allow myself to be used anymore.”
“Used? Is that how you see it? I used you?”
“We’ve used one another.”
That much is true. She has needs. She needs me. Needed me. “We didn’t set out to do this,” I remind her. “It just happened.”
She nods, but her arms are still folded like a defense shield and nothing is going to get through. Not my words, or my actions. I don’t plan to do anything tonight. I didn’t come here with anything in mind. I just can’t operate this way when the way we had started to be was so much better.
I don’t want her to go to sleep thinking I’m an asshole. I especially don’t want her to think I don’t give a fuck, when I do.
Staring at her, with only a few strides between us, I’m blindsided by the notion that I care more about Mari than I allow myself to think. She has always made things better for me. I’m so used to my own company that I’ve not needed to think about anyone else but me.
I’m learning, but some lessons are hard to learn when you come from where I do.
“It did just happen,” she says, agreeing but “What is this? What do we have?”
I hate that she’s making it difficult. Putting me on the spot. “We have …” I don’t know what to call it. I should have been prepared for her to dissect and analyze everything.
But I, too, have been unfair. I haven’t treated her the way she deserves to be treated. I’ve been selfish, thinking only of myself.
“I can’t get close to you and it’s not for lack of trying. You don’t open up.”
Where I come from, with the things that have happened, it’s near impossible for me to open up. She’s lucky. I have shared more with her than I do with most people. “What do you want to know?”
“Whatever you’re willing to tell me.”
I’m not willing to tell her anything. She’s forcing me to be another way, and I can only be the way I am.
“There you go again,” she says, jabbing a finger at me. “You close me off. You only tell me little things here and there.”