Page 74 of All Your Pain

“No, Dean, I’m not stupid. Well, maybe I am because I didn’t see it until it was practically spelled out for me.”

She reaches for the front of my gown and pulls it up until the white bandage on my side is visible.

I’m suddenly reminded of how it happened. I feltsomethinghit me, I thought the sensation in my side was because of the table I knocked into but I was so caught up in the moment, getting that girl out of there and getting myself back to Willow that I didn’t even think to check if it was a bullet that got me.

I didn’t notice any blood but I remember feeling exhausted on the drive home.

It was stupid and reckless of me to endanger Willow like that. If I didn’t make it home she would have thought I’d abandoned her.

I don’t doubt for a second that she would have found a way out and started a new life by herself but that makes the pressure in my chest worse. I want her to be happy but I can’t bear the thought of her finding that with someone else even if I’m gone.

I'm tempted to make a joke about her undressing me, but the cute look of steely determination on her face makes me keep my mouth shut.

She gently places her hand over the bandage, her breath catching in her throat as she gets the nerve to do whatever it is she’s planning on doing next. She holds her gaze with mine, with a ferocity that tells me that she’s not backing down and that she deserves answers.

Of course she does.

I should have given them to her before it came to this.

As she pushes her palms down, her eyes grow wider and wider, the harder she presses.

Like I’ve just hurt her, she quickly pulls her hands away.

Ash clings to my throat where everything inside me just burnt up and died with a single touch. Or more so the lack of that touch.

This is exactly why I didn’t tell her. I can’t stand the thought of her being disgusted at me for this, of her hating me for something I can’t control. I’ll gladly take her hate for everything I’ve done to her but this makes me feel like that small, lost boy again with not a single person to love him and a future of emptiness to come.

I told myself I’d never be that person again.

“I should have put it together after I stitched your cut that night, or after all the other times I fought you and you didn’t even react. Oh, the hot water! Dean, you should have said something.” Her eyes are a deep well of pity as all the puzzle pieces come together in her mind but I don’t want a single drop of her pity. I’ve never had it from anyone else and I don’t need it now.

She looks at my chest and traces her fingers over the old scars. “You really don’t feel anything do you?” she asks softly and my world starts to collapse, darkness overtaking me as I lose what little grip I had left over my control.

Don’t feel anything.

Fuck, she has no idea the depths at which I can feel. Even if I can’t feel pain, the amount of love I have for her is endless. That’s what we both need to hear but my mouth refuses to cooperate.

She’s left me vulnerable and it’s a feeling I don’t like. A feeling I can’t control.

I open my mouth to finally let every thought and feeling spill out without a filter but I stop myself. I can’t twist this around blaming it on her. The last thing I want to do right now is hurt her so much that I risk losing her.

29

WILLOW

It all makes sense now.

The way Dean’s never once flinched away from anything that should have hurt him. When I stitched him up it was like it was nothing,because it was.

The man that’s made me both cry and come from the pain he’s inflicted on me can’t feel it for himself.

“You could have told me, you know? I would have understood.”

Dean leans his head back onto the pillows and sighs. “And have you think of me like I'm some sort of monster? A freak. You going to tell me how fucked up I am now?”

I stare at him, my mouth hanging open as I try to figure him out.Why would he think that?

My heart aches for him and everything he must have been through. I want to wrap my arms around him and make us both feel good in the only way we seem to know how but I hold my own and keep my hands on my lap.

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