I can’t. I’ve been a bully and an asshole but I’ve never forced myself on a girl and I’m not gonna start now. Last thing I want is to hurt her more.
So I release her, disentangling my fingers from her fine hair, from her soft flesh, and stagger back when she shoves at me.
“I said stop.”
I want to point out I stopped, but she hit me in the ribs, over the taped gauze, and the pain slams into me. Dizziness hits me worse than before, something about the pain and the fact that all the blood that’s left in my body has flowed south, between my legs, my dick a throbbing beat to match my racing heart.
“We can’t... can’t do this,” she says, “we can’t. I can’t.”
Her small face is a blur in my stinging eyes. I step back, pressing a hand to my side, keeping a hiss between my teeth, wondering if the cuts are infected, feeling like something’s breaking. That would explain the pain.
It can’t be my fucking heart. That part of me is dead and buried, remember?
“I have to go,” she’s saying now, and I wonder dimly why she’s hesitating, why she’s still here. “Are you okay?”
I almost laugh at that, at her kindness showing through even now. “Go home, Luna. Want a medal? ’Cause you know you’re making the right choice. Go the hell home.”
Any choice but me is better, and it’s good, I think fuzzily, good that she’s angry, that she’s still furious.
I’m a fuck-up. That’s what I do best, I fuck up things, and people’s lives. So I turn and walk blindly toward the river, letting her go.
I was an idiot to think I could keep her even for a second.
Chapter Thirteen
Luna
That’s it, you’re done, I tell myself sternly. Not going to worry about Ross anymore, about the fights he gets into, about him bleeding out. Though okay, I hope he won’t.
About him looking at me with those pale, intense eyes and about his mouth kissing me. The way he made me feel, wanted, desired.
The way his body felt, powerful, aroused. Beautiful.
Not even when over the next few days I don’t see him anywhere, not in the diner, not in town.
I’m not going to be concerned, not even if my last glimpse of him was of his white face as he stumbled away from me and into the woods.
“I discovered early that the more obnoxious I am, the less people expect of me. And that suits me just fine.”
I mean, is that his answer? No remorse, no regrets, just an arrogant “that’s who I am” and then he thinks he can kiss me again?
And boy, can he kiss...
But that’s beside the point. The point is... that the problem isn’t him. It’s me. I’m the one who agreed to help him. I’m the one who went to his house to bring him food and painkillers. I’m the one who, let’s be honest here, kissed him back.
Because I wanted him. Still do.
He’s the kind of sexy that makes intelligent girls go stupid, so maybe that’s normal to want him like that. With that body, the tats, that face with the arctic eyes and lush mouth, that square jaw, those big shoulders, I mean... His beauty is smack in your face, so potent, like a magic drought, a love potion meant to bring women to their knees.
But no, no way. That kiss, that was a moment of weakness. That’s all.
“What do you want from me?”
He asked me that. The question keeps replaying in my head as I battle Josh in videogames, as I help Dad clean up the kitchen, as I try to read in my bed at night, as I serve tables at the diner.
There was a desperation in his voice, as if he really wanted to know, as if he didn’t understand me.
How do I explain to him that what I want shouldn’t need to be explained? I want a decent person. One who understands their mistakes. Someone who will promise not to go there again, someone who’s not an asshole, who doesn’t think that being the way you are is final, terminal. That you can’t change.