I tried to sell my soul last night
Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
He had never tried to give her hope - not on purpose. He had known from the very beginning there was nothing redeeming in him. If anything, he could not be what she had needed, not the other way around. He would have made demands she could not hope to obey. Would have insisted on impossible things. Not because he would have wanted her to be something she was not, but because he would have wished her to be exactly as she was.
She couldn’t twist herself into what she imagined was the perfection he wanted because there was never anything about her he wanted to change.
And so when she speaks the words, claiming she could never be what he wanted, a harsh and discordant laugh escapes his lips. He cannot do anything but laugh at the absurdity of that statement. But she had released the demons inside him, and now she would have to be the one to live with them. “That was never the fucking problem.” His words are harsh, a harshness he doesn’t try to temper. “If I’d wanted you to be anything else than what you are, it would have made never seeing you again the easiest goddamned thing in the world.”
She’d been the only one who made it through the tiny chinks in his armor because she had been the only one who could have ever hoped to understand him. The only one who hadn’t demanded he change.
Until she had demanded it. Until he’d thought that maybe he did want to change.
What a dumbass fucking notion.
They are so close that he can feel the heat of her, the whisper of every tiny movement she makes. For a moment, he closes his eyes. It would be so easy to imagine this was years ago. That at any moment, he would take his rage and shape it into something far more carnal with her. And it’s tempting. So goddamned tempting he can nearly taste it.
But she had made him vulnerable when he never wanted to be. Had exposed the worst and most raw edges he has, and in the moment, he’s not sure he would stop if she said no. He already has enough regrets to carry around with him for the rest of eternity. He doesn’t need one more.
So, instead, he steps back. She would never know how much that simple action cost him. Would never know how it spoke of the regard he has for her.
“You’re wrong,” he says, a finality in his tone. His gaze sharpens, a hard and bitter edge to it, filled with unacknowledged heartache and regret. “You would be far better off forgetting I ever existed.”
@[Ryatah]