He knows it is perhaps not fair to pick a fight with her when he is so clearly on the edge of death, but he has never been overly concerned with fighting fair—just with winning. Specifically, with winning her. All of the reasons he had believed before about needing to push her away had evaporated in his head, all of the self-convincing that he had done was forgotten. Instead, he stood before her shaking and feverish, his eyes rung with white and his nostrils flaring so that you could see the pink lining and the blood flecks.
“I broke your heart?” he is incredulous, and his laugh is tinged with crazed disbelief. “All you have ever done is break my heart. From the moment that we met.” His chest aches to be near her, and he coughs again, straightening when it subsides. “Your very existence shatters me.” Makai shakes his slender head back and forth as if trying to shake the thought, as if he could let it loose from him and forget it all. “You are a constant reminder that I will never be good enough. That everything I want is just out of my reach.”
He takes a step forward, unbidden, and his body is a study of earthquakes, the fault lines clear in the sick angles of him, the pronounced bones of his skeleton. “It didn’t take you long to fall in love again, Oksana,” he cracks, face falling open before her, eyes burning with his anguish. “You believed me so easily. It was like you wanted me to push you away. You believed me.” He is laughing again, and his throat is tight, “As if I don’t live and die by you. As if I would even dream of touching someone else."
Makai is shaking again, and he coughs, but this time it doesn’t subside quickly. His head drops to the ground, and spittle and blood froth on his lips and then fall to the grass. His sides heave with the motion, and he feels dizzy—from the heat, the moment, the closeness and yet distance from her. His knees buckle for a second and he drops slightly before he catches himself; he could practically feel the strength flooding from him.
“You should go,” he whispers, his voice small. “I am sure that he is waiting for you.”
I am sure that he deserves you, is what he thinks, but this hurts too much to say aloud.
MAKAI
I'm a dead man walking here
but that's the least of all my fears