Chapter 7
Shadow
I guess I should have figured that our meeting could only go a certain way when I showed up dressed for battle and called our time a clown show before it even started.
Not only was it not nice, I can’t even call it an asshole move. Childish, more like. Or desperately scared.
The truth is we all want to be loved. Fawnie wasn’t trying to take my number down when she said it. It’s a fairly well-known truth, or at least a truth that a fuckton of people like to spout in all sorts of nonsense ways.
But when she turned her huge blue eyes on me, full of nothing but honesty and gentleness, the ache that I’ve been trying to shove off for years came roaring up over me and settled in my bones. It attacked me like a hungry wolf, gnawing at me until there was nothing left but dust.
I stopped believing I could have a future, normal or otherwise. I’ve been existing—and barely doing that at the best of times.
I don’t want hope.
I don’t want soft, gentle looks full of quiet tenderness.
I don’t want wistfulness or longing.
I don’t want anyone to tell me that my story is still unfolding, or blah, blah, other boring bullshit.
I don’t want a lecture about how precious hope is.
Hope is nothing. My past, present, and future are nothing.
I was okay with that until this woman with the white-blonde hair, and the heavy makeup and her…
her fucking safety pins and piercings and goddamn ideas about connection, rolled into town.
I was fine until she got ideas about me not being fine even though I said I was fine.
The finest of the finest of the fine.
I didn’t even get to see Fawnie’s cat, I insulted her cookies, and I ran away like a scared five-year-old because shit was exactly as real as I knew it would be.
Fuck. I am the winner.
Yup. One hundred percent unsalvageable material right here.
I don’t even know what my problem is anymore.
Hard to pick when there are SOOOOO many.
I want silence. I don’t want to be smothered and ruled and erased by it.
I don’t want to be loved, but I undeniably keep shoving down the need for it.
I purposely cling to the shadows, all the while hating it and craving the sunlight.
I don’t give a shit about being deserving, and at the same time, I want so very badly to be worthy.
Let her think it’s all because of the scars. I know they aren’t so bad. But it gives me something to hide behind.
Slap, slap, slap, slap.
My head angles at the sound of bare feet hitting concrete.
Damn it. Why can’t she just back off?
My heart gives a nasty stutter, then leaps into my throat.
I’ve never in my life felt so… fragile. Not through all the years after, or all the years before the fire when I was told I was useless, a waste of space.
I won’t say my emotions were what they should have been or that they approached anything close to normal, but I feel as though if I tripped and fell now, I’d break all over the ground.
If I fell, I’d never be able to get up again.
I turn around, knowing what I’m going to see.
Her hair flies out behind her, her bare legs flash with every fast stride.
Her skirt swishes around her golden thighs.
She looks like a bronze statue come to life, but the tears glistening on her cheeks, running over her jawline, her nose, and even her perfect coral lips, are very human.
She’s crushed. I did that to her.
She looks so innocent and kind and good.
I’ve stopped walking and I’m staring. I want to turn around and run, disappear where she can’t chase me, to save her from herself, but just like the first time we did this, I don’t move. I can’t.
Especially when I finally notice what she’s cradling in her arms.
A wrapped up plate filled with cookies.
She’s been running for blocks, carrying fucking cookies, crying, in bare feet. She took time to make me a plate of cookies and to wrap it up, but not to put on shoes, so that she didn’t lose me. She had no idea where I was parked.
She slows down thirty feet from me. She tries to compose herself, but it doesn’t work. She sniffles loudly as she walks right up to me.
I’m so raw. The past has been dredged up. I’ve been scraped down to nothing.
There’s no chance in hell that I’m going to be able to come up with words.
I need to tell her that I’m sorry for being such a douchebag.
I’ve tortured her for no reason other than that I hate myself and that I’m an asshole.
I don’t want to be the dumpster fire that lights her way.
We’ve both had enough flames. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that I can’t chase her away and that makes me feel even shittier.
Turns out, I don’t need words. She thrusts the paper plate of wrapped cookies straight into my arms. “I’m s-sorry,” she gets out between gulps of air and sniffles.
She swallows forcefully. “I know you don’t want to hear it, so let me say it once and then it will be done forever and you won’t have to hear it again.
I’m sorry that I broke my word to my dad and to you, and I’m sorry that I should be sorrier about that.
I’m sorry that you were right. You’re always going to be my hero for saving me and Bubby, but I haven’t built you up into some god or- or- I don’t know… ” she pauses, trying to get her breath.
“Look, I know you’re just a person. I can see how lonely you are, and that kills me.
I’m sorry that you got hurt. I’m sorry for the burns.
I’m sorry about all the other hurts that have nothing to do with scars.
I’m so sorry for the people in your life who should have been there and weren’t.
I know why you needed to get away tonight, but I also know that you don’t want to be alone.
I don’t understand the why of it. I just know that I need to be here for you, even if you say you don’t want me to.
I have this feeling that I can’t explain. It’s not magic. It’s real. And- and…”
She swipes at her cheeks, takes a deep breath, and launches herself at me.
I didn’t play fair all night, and she matches my gameplan.
I’m clutching a plate of cookies and can’t stop her from wrapping her arms around my shoulders.
Her hand carefully traces a pattern up to the back of my neck.
Her fingers are scalding hot when she tilts my face down and raises hers.
She doesn’t mash our mouths together and kiss me with the aching desperation of someone who has thought about this moment, longed for it, for years. She doesn’t climb me or whimper into my mouth, bite me, or tease me. The kiss is slow. Almost chaste.
It still rocks my entire goddamn world.
She doesn’t step back when she’s finished.
She plants a closed mouth kiss on my lips, then moves to my chin.
She kisses the side of my jaw, then underneath, when I tilt my face shamelessly for more.
Her lips pepper my throat, eventually landing at the hollow, then traveling back up to my pulse.
She holds them there longest, feeling the evidence of my thrashing heart.
She puts a little bit of space between us and cups my face.
I’m barely breathing. This is what it’s like to be dead.
The night is so quiet around us. It’s late, but not that late.
There should be some kind of noise or movement, or anything.
There’s not. It’s one of those moments that feels like it’s just us left in the world.
I tilt my head up and direct my eyes at the only place it’s safe to look. The stars. Even they seem brighter, more intense, more beautiful.
“That didn’t feel like a pity kiss to me.
” Fawnie manages to make those words sound utterly sincere, all while being a total brat.
“Now that I’ve said sorry and I promise not to say it again, I need to tell you one more thing.
” Her eyes are so bright. So beautiful. The stars have nothing on her.
“You can be scared now and hold out your hand to me and I’ll take it.
I’ll hold onto it. I’ll hold you because I want to. For no other reason, I swear.”
I curl back into myself, hesitating and afraid that this woman could burn me far worse than real flames ever could.
The logical thing to do would be to chase her away, but what I imagine instead is her arms wrapped around me.
My lips are still tingling. My pulse hammers wildly like it’s trying to escape my skin and run straight back to her.
I see her little apartment, the kitchen overflowing with all those cookies.
Coffee. Staying for a little while and not being an asshole.
Finding out that it’s possible to be seen and not die from it.
In the next instant, those images drop from the stars and rain down around me. They’re not practical or right or real. Even if they could be, they can’t. It’s not right. It’s not right because she could break me. I could break her, and she’d hate me forever.
I can’t. I just… can’t.
“Do you have any idea what kind of betrayal this would be to your father?” It’s pathetic.
I know. “Even if it wasn’t, if I wasn’t older than you, if a thousand other things weren’t true, it still wouldn’t work.
Life crushes you. Dreams don’t come true.
People fail. Love is a flawed notion created by society just like every other system, to control people.
I’m too broken and too flawed to be a proper cog.
I always have been. Even if our lives were perfect and we still somehow came together, we’re too different and that will only lead to harm and heartbreak for you.
You’re Preacher’s daughter and he’s the one man who saw me when I most needed it. I can’t hurt him. I can’t hurt you.”
“Whoa,” she breathes. “Love?” Her lips curl into a slow, sardonic smile.
Here she is, saving me from myself.