Chapter 5 #2
Not when Fawnie stares at me, so perfectly silent, looking like a piece of art, looking at me period.
Unflinching. She sees past the scars, the walls, the mean words and black scowls.
She sees so far down that my heart pounds against my ribcage, and it’s still not enough.
She’s looking for more, trying to find that soul I keep telling everyone is nonexistent.
She stares so long that it becomes painful, my gut curdling as it clenches, my skin on fire all over again.
“My dad never told me your real name.” She smiles at me, not dazzling or fake, and somehow not weird at all despite the situation or the long stretch of silence she just broke.
She has the tiniest gap between her two front teeth. I’ve never noticed it before.
My body heats up, but the warmth and the pain of it have nothing to do with the usual suspects.
I haven’t tried on a smile in so long that I might as well be totally detached from it.
It feels odd on my lips. It’s even stranger that I’m going to give it to her, just like that.
No fight. No sarcasm. All while her sapphire eyes wreak havoc with my insides, plunging my normally hyper-controlled state into chaos, touching parts of me that I’m not even aware exist.
“Finn.” It’s broken because I choke it out, not from my wrecked voice.
“Finn,” she repeats, the sound of my name said in kindness rather than scorn was like a velvet caress.
Hearing her sweet voice, seeing her untouched, alive, whole, I would endure every single moment of fear, loathing, pain, loneliness, and degradation all over again.
“Please don’t leave. Don’t go because of me. Don’t go for any other reason. Please.”
If this was anyone else, I’d scoff right back in their face. I stopped listening to what people said and ceding to what they wanted me to do the day my mother looked at me as something subhuman and told me that burns were payment for sins. I don’t give a shit about manners.
Please never worked on me before.
I gently remove my arm from her grasp and tuck it safely back at my side, but instead of turning around, giving her my back, and walking away from her too soft, too big, thickly lashed eyes and her gentle pleas, I find myself lowering my duffel down to the ground.
“Once a month.” Fuck. Did those words come from me? Did I truly just agree to this?
“Once a month,” she repeats.
Her fingers unclench from around my arm, but they don’t leave me. They trickle down like rainwater, until she grasps my gloved hand. Hers is so much smaller. She has a tiny, crescent-shaped scar on the second knuckle of her right hand.
I shouldn’t want to know what happened.
I shouldn’t want to put my lips there.
When it comes to this woman, I’m fucked. I know that already. Our souls have been entwined with each other since the fire, even if that’s impossible and I don’t believe that cosmic, energy, soul shit is even real.
“Can I make my once a month happen tomorrow? Will you come over? Can I bake you cookies? Do you like cookies? If you don’t, I can make you anything.
” She squeezes my hand gently, then releases it.
Her eyes are glistening and her face is radiant.
Not with triumph at getting her way, but with honest joy.
My stomach clenches so hard that it’s probably going to hurt for days. People don’t exactly give me a whole lot of happy emotions on the odd chance they have to look at me.
“Sorry,” she breathes. “That’s too much. I’m excited. If you want to come over, any day this week, that would be great. If you don’t, I can come to you, or we could go anywhere and do anything.
She hasn’t realized that I’m not exactly a go anywhere and do anything kind of person.
Of course she has, dumbass. She’s not afraid to be seen with you.
Hero blindness, remember? She’s always going to see you as something better than you are.
Look at her, studying you like you hung the damn stars and can move the fucking mountains.
It won’t last, soon she’ll see the real you.
Bug out. Now. Don’t come back. She’ll wreck you.
There it all is. The typical insults, the fear, the intrusion, but it cuts itself off, and my head is silent. It wasn’t even that bad. If that’s the worst my brain could fire at me, I’d be doing great.
Her touch scrambles my brain, and she hasn’t even reached my bare skin yet. Not just scrambles. Silences. It’s kind of nice.
“I’ll come to you,” I say stupidly. “I’ll text you.”
“You don’t have my number.”
“No,” I sigh. “But I doubt that will be a problem. You already found my address…”
Her nose scrunches up, bunching up the few freckles on the bridge of her nose. There are all of five and they’re sickeningly charming. I can’t stop looking at them.
“I’m sorry. That was… bad. I know it. I wrecked your privacy, disrespected you, went against your wishes, ignored you… all of it. I won’t do anything like that again.”
I make a noise of disbelief in my throat. It causes her lips to twitch. We both know that she’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. Just like I’d go back into that burning house and ruin my health for the sake of a feline.
Just like I’d let this woman with all her sweetness and all her perfection and her beautiful heart stop me from running away from the inevitable. My soul. Hers. She’s going to shatter me, wreck me, ruin me.
“Can I just give it to you?” she asks, unable to keep from breaking into a full grin. “My number?”
Do I really have a choice? Have I ever?
“Looks like motherfucking cookies it is,” I grumble.
Fawnie’s face lights up, going from happy to absolutely radiant again. Like I’ve just unmoored the world from its chains and set it at her feet.
I’ve never seen someone so happy to be around another person who is so absolutely dark and grumpy.
This is going to be bad. There’s nothing else that it can be.