My traitorous heart skipped a beat. I didn’t want this. I wanted to be cured of his curse. His black magic on my heart. I needed to be exorcised. I needed a priest.
“Why?”
Did I really ask that? Why did I ask that?
Because you want to hear how important you are to him. What you mean to him. If you do mean anything to him.
“You know why,” he said gently. Then he turned his head to look at me. His eyes pulling me again. Back to where I was before. “You know.”
Suddenly I was feeling angry. So mad my chest was heaving from breathing so hard, so fast.
“Pull over to the side of the road. Now!”
As soon as he did, I shot out of the car. I couldn’t be around him. I just couldn’t. I was losing my shit, and there was no way I was going to allow myself to blow up on him the way I had the night before he left.
I started walking. I heard the car door slam closed.
“Where the hell are you going?” he yelled behind me.
“It’s none of your fucking business!” I yelled back.
I curled my hands into fists. The sun was glaringly bright in the sky. We were still outside of the city. The vehicles here drove over the speed limit. I could hear them zipping past, the ground shaking.
I didn’t care. If I had to walk home, I would. I couldn’t be around him anymore. But I wasn’t stupid. I definitely didn’t want to die. I stayed away from the road but walked as fast as I could.
Suddenly he was beside me, close to the road. I knew he was protecting me from the vehicles, but it only made me angrier.
I wanted to get over him. I wanted to be rid of him. And every time he did something kind or sweet, my treacherous heart gave in, little by little.
“You’re going to walk home? Is that your plan?” he demanded.
“What do you care? You don’t get to know anything about me when you can’t even…when you can’t even—”
“When I can’t even what?”
I was so close, so close, to punching his pretty face. I walked faster. He matched my pace.
“I lost my phone,” he said suddenly.
I stopped in my tracks and shot him a glare. “I didn’t know you could go so low and lie to me like that.”
“I’m not.”
If it was true…that was why I’d seen a new phone in his truck.
“You mean you lost your phone right after I texted you that night?”
“No,” he answered after a moment. “Not right after.”
“Then you just didn’t want to reply.”
He raked his hands through his hair. “It’s not about wanting.”
“What then?”
“It was better that way,” he replied. “At the time.”
I was done. Totally done.