Can't Fix Cupid

Warren frowns at the shakiness of my voice and the way I keep fidgeting. “Trix, what is it?”

I force my eyes to lock onto his. “I love you.”

A simple statement. With the most significant meaning.

Three short words. With the longest implications.

The confession slips from my hesitant lips and wraps around us like the beach breeze, causing bumps to pebble over my skin.

I watch Warren, and he watches me.

I can’t breathe. My heart can’t even beat. I’m stuck with my love lying unclaimed in the inches between us, and that space widens as he continues to stare at me with an inscrutable expression on his face.

Seconds tick by. His eyes shutter a little bit more with each one.

Speak, my eyes plead. Say something, my lips beg. Say it back, my fluttering chest implores.

But he doesn’t.

Warren finally clears his throat, and he lifts me off his lap, placing me on the blanket next to him. I immediately want to crawl back into his embrace, but I stop myself.

“Trix, we were clear on what this was. We had a deal from the beginning. You’re leaving. That’s what you told me.”

I pull my knees into my chest, as if they can act as armor to my heart. “I know. I was. I am,” I stutter. “But I can try to stay a little longer; I can maybe—”

Warren cuts me off with a sharp shake of his head. “No.”

That word flings out of his mouth like a needle piercing my chest.

“No? You don’t want me to stay?”

“You’re leaving,” he repeats. “And I can’t commit.”

Hot tears well up in my eyes. “But you are committed,” I argue. “Even without the label of it, you are. Unless you’ve been dating or fucking other women while we’ve been together?” I challenge.

He gives me a sharp look. “You know I haven’t.”

“Exactly. So why are you talking like you’re incapable of committing? You’re already doing it,” I say, stressing each word. “And we’re perfect together. You and I both know that. It doesn’t matter that it’s only been a short time. When soulmates meet, they just know,” I say, my voice cracking.

Instead of my words getting through to him, Warren starts to shut down even more. I watch as that old mask of his settles back into place. The more his eyes harden on me, the more fear grips my soul.

“There’s no such thing as soulmates, and we aren’t doing this. You need to drop it, Trix. Now.” His tone is hard. Distant. Unyielding. So foreign to how he usually speaks to me that it’s almost in another language entirely.

I look back at him with steady, heartrending resolve. “I love you, Warren Knight. And I know you love me too.”

The final piece of his mask fits into place. His warm brown eyes turn cold. The supple curve of his lips thins. His jaw tightens. His shoulders tense. Every comforting edge of him turns sharp.

And I know what’s coming next. It’s what always leads after his cruelty cements into place. His tongue will lash out like a vicious whip. It will hurt, and it will sting, and he will make me long for all those times before, when his tongue spoke sweet whispers in my ear or licked my body into bliss.

“Don’t say it,” I whisper, closing my eyes against the onslaught that I know he’s going to wreck me with. “Don’t,” I plead.

But he does it anyway. Just like I knew he would. “I don’t love you. I never have, and I never will.”

The lash rips into me, cleaving me right down the middle. Tears fall from my ripped heart, soaking my cheeks.

“You’re lying,” I choke out. “I know you are.”

I can feel his love. It warms my cupid mark and sets me tingling from the inside out. But even without my cupidity abilities, I would still know.