I tried to sell my soul last night
Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
It’s the sharpness of her words that draws his gaze back to her. Despite his repeated attempts to push her away in the past, she had never had a genuinely harsh word for him. She had always been soft, molding herself to fit even the most ragged edges. Now, instead of giving, she pushed back.
He had ignored it before, but now he noted the darkness curling around her. A darkness that hadn’t been there the last time they met. He should be surprised. Instead, jaded creature that he is, he can only wonder how it hadn’t happened sooner. But for some inexplicable reason, it eases something inside him. The uncoiling tension is enough to loosen his tongue, though perhaps not for the best. “You’ve grown a fucking spine.”
There is something that almost tastes like amusement in those words, though they are too bitter for true humor. When everything he does and says is flavored by bitterness though, who can tell anymore?
If he had known she could unwrap his emotions, he might have tried to quash that impulse. He had hidden his feelings, had stolen her memories, for a reason. She had everything she’d once thought she wanted from him, and for the first time in his life, he had done something marginally selfless. The pain of what might have been did not need to be her burden to bear. Far better for her to spend the rest of her life believing he had been incapable of loving her rather than too broken to admit to his feelings until it had been too late.
So he did what he has always done, driving the harshest edge of his words towards her like a blade. “Maybe if you’d had one then, the last time we met wouldn’t have been such a shit show.”
@Ryatah