Page 7 of Unbound
Silence fills the room and every space in my head. For once, I hear nothing around me. No beat, no blood, no screams… just her and the moment she’s going to decide to break me completely. It’s coming. I can sense the change in the rapid rise and fall of her chest.
She swallows hard, darting her eyes to the door. She wants to tell me to get the fuck out, but she knows I’ll keep coming back until she finally gives me what I’m looking for.
A truth.
I count the seconds.
Each excruciatingly long one.
Until she breaths out, “I lied….”
And there it is, right here, it finally happens. Confusion and lies flood my mind, the smoke rising and rising until I’m sure I’m about to choke on them.
Our eyes collide, the fires of hell in mine, cold winter in hers. She’s looking at me without a hint of realization as to what this means. I swallow back the pain.
My heart stumbles, trips over what I can’t say.
I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything. She’s silent, staring back at me with troubled eyes.
She’s waiting for something, but I don’t think she knows what.
I stare. Waiting. My gaze drops, losing the battle, wilting under her heat like roses in the desert. It’s more thanI lied.It’s deception and hollow holes I’ve hidden myself in. It’s me wanting truth but hating that it’s coming, finally, after so long. It’s all I’veeverwanted.
“That night… in Mexico….”
She starts to cry, tears, so many tears….
“I uh….” Her hands tremble and she covers her face.
Like always, she can’t look at me, her shoulders forward.
I stare and wait for what I know is going to tear me apart and leave me weaker than ever before.
I shake. Because I knew, I fuckingknewshe’d lied. Someone like her doesn’t just accidently fuck another guy and not make the conscious decision to do so.
“I was scared. Before I left, you told me you wanted to marry me someday. And I wanted that, God did I want that, Rawley. I did. But… I didn’t want to have any regrets. I didn’t… I wanted to have sex with someone else. I wanted to know what it was like to be with someone else. I’m not trying to blame it on my parents, but after what happened to them, I didn’t want that to happen to us. I knew, I just knew I would end up with you, forever. It’s what I wanted, but I was eighteen… all I’d ever known was being Rawley Walker’s girl. The football player’s cheerleader… and I wanted to know I wasn’t making a mistake by wanting to be with you for the rest of my life. So I had sex with someone else.”
The sharpness of what’s coming, the pain inside me, it cuts deep. My heart holds on regardless of this being the end.
I take a hold of her without thinking, my arms around her back.I hate you,I cry inside, the words trapped, an endless loop, but I don’t say them.
It’s the heaviest of weights hitting me.
She searches my face but her eyes… they’re so fucking lost. I dig my hands into her sides. “Say something.”
I don’t.
I can’t. She doesn’t want to hear what I’m thinking.
“I’m sorry.” Her words come out half broken, a sob escaping her.
She thinks she can be sorry for lying to me for three years and it be okay?
“Didn’t you ever wonder back then what it’d be like to be with someone else?”
I still don’t say anything because I didn’t. I still don’t.
Pulling myself closer, I stroke her cheek with my thumb but don’t say anymore. I want to place my hand on her chest, feel her pulse beneath my fingertips. I want to lay next to her and listen to her heartbeat. I want that sound to end the noise in my head and the anguish pulsing inside me like an angry drumbeat that’s forever taken over.
