Page 23 of Wreck and Ruin
My mouth is hanging open, but I don't care what I look like right now.
This woman.
This shy yet lionhearted woman is anything but fragile. She just showed me a part of herself that I'm not sure she's ever shown anyone else, just by how she’s looking at me. I can’t say for certain, but I sense the courage it must have taken her to speak to me at all.
A stranger.
A man.
My chest tightens as an unfamiliar feeling digs its nails deep into my heart, reminding me that I have one.
I think I might be falling for her.
Not just anyone.
Airlie.
She can’t be fucking older than nineteen, what the fuck is wrong with me?
Her hands tremble, and I reach out to hold them without thinking. My fingers brush against her delicate, almost translucent skin as she willingly places her small hands in my much larger ones. It’s all I can do not to lift her in my arms and claim her as mine, right here, right now, but I won't, even if it’s what my soul is compelling me to do.
That's not what she needs.
Airlie needs to know that she's protected, that allowing a man, allowingme,to see her raw and vulnerable, wasn't a mistake, and that for once in her life, her heart is safe.
She’s safe with me.
Even if my soul, that seems to be calling all the shots right now, is damned.
I spent half my miserable life thinking I’d never be happy and the other half believing I didn’t deserve happiness at all.
Is the latter still true?
Fuck yes.
But right now, with her hands in mine, I’ll take whatever she’s willing to give. She’s avoided me for weeks, and I’ve been going out of my fucking mind. And now, she’s right here in front of me.
“Airlie, I—” I choke out. I can’t even talk right now with how she’s smiling up at me with those wide, blue-green eyes.
The darkness isn’t strong enough to hide her beauty from me, but it’s her tenderness that catches me off guard, leaving me completely speechless.
She reminds me of the sun as it sets, its warm glow dancing across the earth, and everything pure and beautiful.
Everything I am not.
She should run.
Her instincts to do so have clearly left the building because she’s here, like this, with me. Not hovering on the edges of the cave but a breath away from being in my arms.
I’m fucking terrified.
I am terrified that the darkness that has been seething beneath my flesh for the thirty-two years I’ve been breathing will swallow her innocence, her light, leaving nothing but emptiness and pain in its wake.
I’m notgood, certainly not good enough for her.
For anyone.
And now I’ve gone and complicated shit by catching feelings for her. I don't know how or when. But there's no use denying it. In the short time I’ve known her, she’s cared for me in ways no one else ever has.
