Page 76 of Getting It Twisted

But that’s not how things turned out. Daniel had every reason to hate me for the way I hurt him and left him, but instead of hating me, he once again proved his kindness, where no one has ever been kind to me before.

It pushed me off-balance. It made me let my guard down and develop these feelings I never planned, wanted, or asked for. It’s all his fault. He forced them out of me.

My eyes burn, and I shut them as my hands claw at the floor, fingers curling into tight fists.

No . . . it’s my fault for going after him in the first place. Or at least, it’s my fault for not keeping our relationship the no-strings-attached hate-fucking it should have been.

This is what happens when you open up to someone: It might feel good for a while, but the initial relief is always followed by pain and regret.

I should have known. No one in this world can stand me for very long. Daniel had a good run at it, but when push comes to shove, I’m too fucked up for even him to handle. Too twisted and tainted by my past, by what happened in this house and the fucked-up shit I do to deal with it.

And if Daniel can’t stand me, who will?

George is right about me; I’m an asshole, and there’s no hope I’ll ever change. It’s apparent in how I treat people and in how I treat myself. I don’t blame Daniel for the disgust in his face when he looked through those pictures, and I don’t blame him for leaving. After all, what do I have to offer?

I have my looks, but looks fade. I have my tight ass and cock-hungry mouth. But beneath all that, there’s a dark hole in me that nothing and no one can fill.

And Daniel . . . Daniel deserves more than my darkness. He should be free, away from my shackles holding him down. Heshould find someone without a dark hole in them, someone who won’t weigh him down and cling to him like a leech.

Alongside the nausea welling up my throat, tears spring to my eyes. It’s not just his perfect, girthy cock that hit me in all the right places that I’m grieving. It’s more than that.

It’s his smile in the sunlight. It’s the amused, fond tilt of his mouth, reserved only for me. It’s the timbre of his voice, the strength of his arms, and the warmth of his body wrapped safely around mine.

Now I’ll never experience that again.

I let out a single, heaving sob before wiping my eyes with my forearm, harsh enough to hurt. One thing’s for sure: I was a lot less pathetic when I was alone and needed no one. Well, that’s not exactly true, but at least I needed people for one purpose only.

It’s time for me to need no one again.

I better go someplace where there’re people who won’t try to fix what can’t be fixed. People who can shut me up and treat me like I deserve to be treated. Turn my thoughts off and reduce me to the barest, basest sense of who I am.

There’s a hole in me, and someone’s gotta fill it.

Chapter 16

Daniel

Waking up at sixin the morning for work feels like a blessing. To be ordered around and lift heavy things until I’m soaked in sweat is exactly what I need, to keep my body busy and my thoughts at bay.

But for some reason, work isn’t as good of a distraction as it used to be. My thoughts keep straying, and I go for a run in the afternoon to clear my head. Despite my attempts to stop them, my thoughts start spinning again as my feet pummel the ground.

How the fuck am I supposed to get past this? It was hard enough when I was eighteen. With nothing but a few words, Nathan can rip my heart from my chest, throw it to the ground, and step on it with his steel-toed boots. I knew this from the start. So why the hell did I think it was a good idea to open myself up to be hurt again?

There’s one difference though: This time, it was my choice to leave. That should give me at leastsomerelief, but it doesn’t. If anything, it makes the whole thing feel like a waste, because now Nathan is hurt too. I opened the floodgates to the most painful parts of his past, and then I left him alone to drown in it.

For all that I’m pissed at him, it wasn’t fair to do what I did. But what else was I supposed to do? He hurt me. He hurt me by tagging me along in this game of his—by pretending we have something special when we don’t.

George was right. Nathan cares only for himself, and he doesn’t love me; he’s incapable of love. All he cares about is his own needs being met, with no regard for the consequences or who he might hurt along the way.

He expected me to open up my heart to him without bothering to do the same in return. He knew damn well how capable he was of upending my life, and he didn’t care—that’s fucking apparent. Maybe hedoesdeserve what I did. Maybe I made the right choice in leaving him to do what he does best: looking out for number one and wreaking havoc on everyone else’s lives in the process.

I was an idiot for thinking I could get him to stay here and an even bigger idiot for thinking he wanted me—formeand not for some twisted way of dealing with his trauma. For the hundredth time, I wish he would’ve told me what he’s been through. It would have made things easier. But at the same time, part of me wishes I could have gone on unknowing, blissfully unaware.

Now that I know what he’s been through—what he’sstillputting himself through—I refuse to be a compliant piece of the puzzle. I refuse to be one of his abusers, and I refuse to accept that I might be one already because of what happened at the grad party . . . Because of what I did to him . . .

I run and run until I feel sick, until I feel like I’m gonna pass out. Hunched over, I grip a lamppost with both hands and yellan incoherent curse. Once I’ve caught my breath, I keep running. And running. And running.

Dinnertime comes and goes. By nine, there’s a knock on my door.

---