His jaw clenches at my eager answer. Then, “Promise me that you won’t waste your time on people like that. Promise me that you’re done chasing after people like that. People who don’t see you. People who are incapable of seeing you. People who don’t deserve you. Or your loyalty or your fight or your fire. People who don’t deserve your love or your fucking purple polka dot heart.”
“I promise,” I whisper without hesitation, without holding back.
He doesn’t believe me though.
Fisting the sheets, he growls, his eyes even more grave, “No lying, Poe. No more fucking lying, you understand? I don’t want you to make a promise that you’ll —”
“I’m not,” I cut him off, twisting his shirt. “I’m not lying. I promise I’ll stop. I promise I won’t run after people who don’t deserve it.” Then, “But more than that I promise that I’ll listen to you from now on. I’ll listen and I’ll obey.”
“What?”
I dig my heels in the small of his back as I reply, “I-I know I snuck out tonight and went to see him but that was the last time. I won’t do it anymore. I won’t lie to you or hide things from you. I won’t break your trust. I’ll finish summer school and then I’ll stay at St. Mary’s for as long as you want me to. And this time, I’ll follow all your rules. I’ll do whatever you want me to, Alaric.”
He stares at me a beat.
His eyes dark, his jaw clenched, his fingers fisted in the sheets.
Before his eyelids flicker down.
To my throat, my arched-up neck. His gaze settles on my fluttering pulse and I bite my lip.
I bite my lip harder when he moves on from my wildly beating pulse to my heaving chest. And that’s when I realize what I’m wearing. Or rather how flimsy my clothes are, how exposing.
It’s not as if I didn’t know what sort of clothes I had on before this moment.
I knew I was in my purple pajamas with lace trim.
But this is the first time he’s noticing it. He’s noticing me lying all spread out and underneath him. He’s noticing how my thighs are entwined with his and how I’m holding on to his shirt sleeves.
Not only that, he notices how disheveled my top is. How my one fragile little sleeve has been pushed down my arm, leaving my shoulder all bare, pulling the neck even lower. And how the hem is all twisted up, exposing a sliver of my pale belly.
And all of that causes a rush in my body.
So much so that I have to arch up against him. I have to move and squirm under him because I can’t contain all these buzzing emotions inside of me. I have to squeeze my thighs around his hips, pull at his shirt, rub my pelvis against his so I can expend this energy. This electricity that seems to be rushing up and down my veins.
And all my effort, my shameless twisting, makes his nostrils flare.
A muscle comes alive on his cheek.
And the moment my top hikes up even more, showing my belly button, he stiffens for a second before moving. Before pulling himself up and away from my body in a split second. As if electrocuted.
As if he can’t stand to be so close to me.
I lie there for a second or two until I feel a chill rushing down my body, a cold front replacing the fire.
Making me get up myself.
Making me come up to my knees on the bed and go, “What —”
“I haven’t been completely honest with you,” he begins, now standing on his feet, his hands shoved down into his pockets.
Looking stern and shut down for the first time since I woke up from my nightmare and found myself in his arms.
This is also the first time that he stands at a distance from me, making me realize that I don’t have my glasses on.
Not because I can’t see him but because I can.
Without my glasses.
He has made it so by standing within the range of my poor eyesight.
My heart clenches in my chest. At the care he’s taking. Still taking. At how mindful he always is because he knows about my vision. And that just makes this sudden separation even more unbearable.
Even colder.
But I fist my hands at my sides, trying to give him space. “Honest about what?”
His jaw moves back and forth. “I guess it’s pretty ironic and unfair of me to keep punishing you for lying and for hiding things when I’ve done the same. But that’s the thing. That I have been unfair to you. I’ve been hard on you for no reason other than the fact that you reminded me of a time in my life that I’d rather forget. You reminded me of her. I guess Mo has already told you all that, but…”