Dare You to Hate Me

He eyes me knowingly.

“Why did you do it?” I ask him.

“To get you out.”

“What if I didn’t want that?”

“You don’t want charity,” he corrects, tone not allowing for any argument. “But that hasn’t stopped you from sleeping in my bed every night. I don’t force you there. I didn’t force you to kiss me or make you spread your legs. We both wanted it. You being here is no hardship for anyone, least of all you. If anything, you’re the one with something to gain.”

I glare over his dry sentiment. “Considering you lost your virginity—” I make sure my voice is loud enough for our audience upstairs. “—to me, I’d say I’m not the only one who’s gaining something from this arrangement. Whether I opened my thighs for you or not isn’t the deciding factor. I’m allowed to be pissed off that you made a decision for me that wasn’t yours to make.”

One more step and we’re facing off. “You can keep telling yourself that all you want, sweetheart, but you’ll have to admit you like being here eventually.”

I say nothing.

Neither does he.

It goes on for a long stretch of time until I hear someone from upstairs say, “Do you think they’re making out?”

Then another person says, “Was Griffith really a fucking virgin?”

I grin. He remains stoic.

Eventually, I look him in the eyes and quietly say, “I need control, Aiden. Not the illusion of it. Without control I…” I sniff back tears and feel my ducts burn from the weakness trying to escape me. “Sometimes I wish that the blade would have done what it was supposed to when I put it through my skin two years ago. We could have avoided all this…anger. Uncertainty. At least then I would have controlled my fate instead of letting it control me.”

His Adam’s apple bobs. “Don’t say that. It didn’t work because you weren’t meant to succumb to the demons. Not then. Not now. Especially not when you’re back in my life again.”

I try stopping my jaw from quivering, my bottom lip trembling as I force out, “You can’t stop the voices in my head, Aiden.”

His large palm cups my cheek, and without thinking, I lean into it. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t try, Ivy. The reason I finally decided to talk to you that day in Bea’s is because I was done waiting for you to. I didn’t want to leave knowing I didn’t even try to regain what we had. Let me help you. Let me try to do something.”

I close my eyes.

He releases a breath.

It’s completely silent upstairs.

Chapter Eighteen

Aiden

We wind up molded together as I wrap my arms around her as tightly as possible like I can suffocate the monsters that live in her mind. Her cheek rests against my drumming heartbeat, one of my hands cradling the back of her head. “How many times have you thought that?”

Her tone is throaty. “Too many.”

“Have you hurt yourself again?” I try keeping my tone even, but the hardness leaks through. Chaos has been fidgety lately, always tugging on her shirt sleeves, always running her fingers over the scars I know she hides. It’s made me nervous, like at any moment I’ll find blood on the sheets or stains on her clothing.

When she says nothing, my throat thickens with a need to know. “Have you hurt yourself again, Ivy? You need to tell me so we can do something about it.”

Her body locks in my hold, but I don’t let her shut down. My fingers thread through her hair, combing the locks gently. Eventually, her quiet voice breaks the screaming thoughts swirling around in my skull. “No.”

I let myself breathe.

Until, “But I’ve wanted to.”

Drawing back and tipping her chin up to meet my eyes, I search her distant expression. The colored orbs staring at me aren’t focused and they’re glassy from an urge I’ll never be able to understand. “What can I do?”

She shakes her head, staying quiet as her jaw quivers under my fingers.