I do.
I do understand that.
He told me this once when I was sixteen, that he’d climb every tower, bust through every window to get to me. And today he did.
So I get that and I nod. “Yes.”
“You fucking scared me.” His fingers on my body are urgent and pulling. “You scared me.”
I fist his shirt and stretch my neck even more. “But you were so…”
He presses his forehead to mine, his eyes flashing. “I know. I know I was cruel. What I said was uncalled for, but you need to remember something. You need to remember that I’m not made for love. I don’t do love. Some people can. Some people can fall in love, have a family, live in a big fucking house decorated with flowers and stuff. Some people stay together for the rest of their lives. And when one of them dies, the other one dies too. Or lives while praying for death. I’m not one of them. I didn’t grow up like that. I didn’t… I never saw stuff like that, you understand? All I’ve known is how to fight, how to go to war, how to win wars.
“And you won’t get that because you’ve always had it. Love. You’ve always had brothers who loved you, who cared for you, who protected you. And you bake fucking cupcakes and you knit and you dance like a fairy. You are a fairy. But I’ve always been alone. I don’t have friends. Except for a sixty-year-old man who sucks at giving advice. I don’t have a family to speak of. I’ve got a shitty father and a mother who doesn’t care. I’ve got Pest but she’s more dependent on me than anything. I don’t expect you to understand any of this though. But I want you to understand this: I want you to understand that you can’t fall in love with me. Not again. You can’t fucking fall, Fae. You can’t. You can’t get your feelings mixed up again if I fuck you, you got that?”
“What?”
“I’ve got a sister who’s pretty fucking emotional. And you’re that too. Girls can be emotional about this stuff. But I don’t want you to be, okay? I don’t want you to get involved emotionally if we have sex. Because I’m only going to hurt you. And I’ve done that before and it fucking sucked. It sucked. It tore me apart for two years and I pretended that it didn’t. But it did. And even though it might destroy me to hurt you again, I will. You saw what I did just now, didn’t you? So I know that I will. Because that’s all I know.”
That’s all he knows.
How to hurt and how to be cruel.
How to be a villain.
A villain who doesn’t want to hurt me but will. Because I’ll get emotionally involved if we have sex.
This should do it then, shouldn’t it? Kill my love. Once and for all. Besides this isn’t the first time he’s said that he can’t love or that he’ll break my heart if I give it to him again.
So this should make me move on.
But it only makes me fall more. The thing he doesn’t want me to do.
It only makes me fall deeper and deeper, so deep that I’ll never come out. I’ll never come up for air. I don’t even need air.
I only need him.
This lonely boy.
Because I’m a girl in love.
“Promise me,” he rasps, begging, when all I do is stare up at him. “Promise me that you won’t fall in love with me. You need to promise me that, Fae.”
His features have the same urgency that they did when he asked me to hold on to my dress two years ago. When he asked me to protect myself, my virginity, my body, from him. Because if he saw what was between my legs, he would take it. He would rip it from me.
I did what he asked me to do back then.
But I can’t do it now.
I can’t not love him.
“If I promise, will you fuck me?” I whisper like I did back then.
If I promise, will you kiss me?
At my words, he lets it show. His need. The need that he’s been hiding for weeks now.
The need that darkens his features, sharpens them. Makes them all points and peaks and edges. Unsafe and dangerous.
Villainous.
And I know his answer is going to be the same as it was two years ago on that rainy night. “Fuck yeah.”
My breaths shouldn’t come so easy now but they do.
My lungs are happy. My heart is happy too. Because I get to be his and he gets to be mine. Secretly but still.
“I promise,” I lie and seal my fate.
His villainous, beautiful features ripple. “You do.”
I nod. “Yes. I won’t fall in love with you.”
Because I already have.