Page 118 of Tame Me

‘I—’

‘Fine, go, then.’

Because I don’t want to hear it. I can’t. I’m just...incandescent. I can’t blink away the red mist. I can’t breathe through it. I’ve let her in and I shouldn’t have and I need her gone.

‘Go. Wherever you want. I don’t care. Just go now.’

She looks hurt. What, did she expect me to beg her to stay?

I don’t need to be rejected again. Be told twice that I’m not who or what she wants. No, thanks.

Her eyes fill. I cannot handle tears. I step back jerkily.

‘Dain...’

There iszeropoint in continuing this conversation a second longer.

‘You want to be free,’ I snap.

People do this. They push you away right when they shouldn’t. When you think everything is finally okay. But it’s never okay. Because they don’t love you. That’s the biggest, cruellest lie of all and for her to use that one on me is unforgivable. And I can’t hold back the bitterness. I shake my head—rejection of my own. ‘Youdon’tlove me and you never should have said that—’

‘I do.’ She stands tall and pale. ‘But you don’t believe me. Because you don’t trust me.’

‘Do you blame me for that?’

She lies. I know it and she knows I know it.

‘I’m not lying about this,’ she says softly. ‘But you can’t believe me because you don’t feel worthy of love.’

I’m stunned to silence as she stares at me with intensity in her eyes.

In the end I can only mutter weakly, ‘And you do?’

‘I didn’t before,’ she admits huskily. ‘But I do now. Now I know I should and could have it. So can you. But the thing is, you don’t want that from me. And I didn’t mean to make things even more awkward for you.’

Awkward. She thinks she’s made things awkward. She’s made everything utterly unbearable.

I walk out of the room, unable to say anything more. I walk out of the house, unable to stand anything any more. I just walk out and keep walking. I do the one thing I promised I wouldn’t. I leave them.

But she’s already given up on me. She’s decided that this isn’t going to work.

I don’t like quitting. I don’t like failure. But I’m so angry with her. I want to smash something. Instead I storm down the road and head to the river.

I already know relationships don’t last but she’s ending ours way before time. Why? Because shelovesme?

It’s laughable. The worst, cruellest joke.

I don’t want to think. I can’t. It’s too painful. But with every step I take away from the house her words echo in my head. She’s ripped me open and poured salt onto the wounds.

My parents excelled in playing out their personal issues publicly for point-scoring in their war. They used me over and over in that way. My parents also kept the mostimportantthing secret from me—together with my grandfather they kept his terminal cancer diagnosis from me.

But maybe Talia didn’t mean to do that. She looked horrified when I accused her of going public and that was when she pushed me away totally. It was formybenefit, she argued. For my freedom.

I try to remember—try to work out where it went wrong tonight. I stood with her at the start, holding her hand. She was quiet but charming. I believed her capable. I thought I could walk away. I thought she had the security. I was completely wrong.

In that moment at the party with Chloe, Talia was trying to protectherself. She was wounded and she exploded. Which meant she was deep in an emotional storm—like the night she blew up at me when she thought I’d thrown out Lukas’s toy rabbit.

I suspected she felt she wasn’t a good enough fit for me or my lifestyle—but I thought I’d reassured her. Clearly I failed and something must’ve happened to upset her.

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