What Grows Dies Here

Or he tried to.

“Why do you keep coming back?” I cried, hitting his chest.

His arms circled around me, or at least tried to. I kept hitting, fighting with a violence I’d been hiding inside of me.

He could’ve stopped me in an instant, I knew that. Not just because of his muscles. Because his whole body was a weapon.

“I need you to hate me,” I sobbed. “You have to hate me.”

His hand stroked my hair with a gentleness that shouldn’t have been possible in proximity to the violence it’d just unleashed. But this was a man who defied possibility.

“I’m never gonna hate you, darlin’,” he murmured against my hair. “You tryin’ to hurt me is only workin’ because you’re hurting yourself in the process.” He pulled back so our eyes met. “I can handle a lot in this world, have handled a lot. But the only thing that almost brings me to my knees is seeing you try to tear yourself apart in order to draw my blood. Push me away because you think it’s accomplishing something. Because you want to punish yourself.”

His hand ghosted over my jaw. “I wish I could stop it with a snap of my fingers, but I’m smart enough to understand it’s not going to work like that. I’m going to watch you hurt yourself until you realize that the only way you’ll ever be able to push me away would be to lower me into a goddamn grave.” He brushed my hair from my face. “And, baby… I hope to fucking God it doesn’t take you that long to realize that.”

I didn’t respond to him, didn’t try to fight him anymore. I just kept sobbing. I broke apart. Everything I’d been holding in poured out of me, all of the tears, the sorrow.

Karson gathered me into his arms at some point and carried me out of the club. I clung to him like a life raft.

Like he was the only thing tethering me to this earth.

The next morning I was hungover.

Really fucking hungover.

Every one of my limbs ached. It felt as if I’d been in a car crash.

Then I remembered the bone shaking sobs I’d let out in Karson’s arms. Almost three years of trauma, pain, had been let out in a single night.

It made sense as to why I was hurting.

There was a glass of water and two aspirin on my bedside table, and I took them thankfully.

I was alone in bed, but the sheets smelled like Karson.

The smell of bacon drifted through the house. He was cooking. Of course. He was still on his mission to feed me.

My first mission was a shower and brushing my teeth.

Once that was done, I slipped on some sweats and found him in the kitchen.

His eyes fluttered up to me. They were warm. He pointed with his spatula. “Sit.”

Because I was still hungover, still shell-shocked, and because I really didn’t want to steal that warmth from his eyes, I did as he said.

The espresso machine whirred as he turned to make me a coffee. I watched him hungrily, not for food, but for him. This. Him cooking me breakfast in my kitchen as if nothing had happened. I could linger in this fantasy for a while. For the length of the meal.

Which was why I took his coffee with a smile and waited for him to sit down beside me to eat breakfast.

He leaned over to squeeze my thigh as he sat down, my body soaking up that contact.

That hand stayed there on my thigh for the entire meal, despite him having to eat one handed. I didn’t dare move it. It warmed me in a way no heater or blanket ever could.

We didn’t speak as we ate.

Words would ruin everything, I sensed.

So I savored the food, the moment, the fantasy. Too soon, it was over.