like the bullet you never saw coming; beth

[adna]

one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing
one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling
one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide

Her apology isn’t enough. It isn’t enough.

Because it doesn’t slow down his own rage but instead throws gasoline on the fire of it.

He continues to scold her, and at first, she takes it. She bows her head and swallows it because she deserves it—he’s right. He hadn’t done anything to deserve it other than exist. Other than leave like she had known that he would. He hadn’t done anything except be exactly who he was.

But the words don’t stop. He doesn’t stop.

“What else do you want me to say, Beth?” her voice getting heated again, unable to not react to him, unable to just sit there and let him pour his anger out on her silently. “I told you that I’m sorry.” The word has considerable less softness behind it now as she weaponizes it—as she throws it his way.

Her sage green eyes still glitter with tears but she lifts her head, straightens her shoulders. She bites down until she thinks she may bleed, her jaw growing sore with the pressure. “Do I look happy to you?” There is something like incredulity that nearly breaks her features, crackling across it like electricity.

She swallows hard, trying to bite back the words that rise in her, the truth that bubbles up. “I haven’t been happy since the second I woke up and you were gone, Beth. I have been miserable. So I am sorry I am not a bundle of fucking sunshine after having spent months missing you with a daily, growing reminder of you.” She trembles, takes a step forward and then stops, breathing hard. “I don’t know what I want.”

This a half-truth.

She knows what she wants; she’s just terrified to say it.

ADNA