Page 81 of Oh, Hell No

He blew out a long breath. “That night, you weren’t blackout drunk. You fell asleep on the sofa with the ice cream dripping onto the rug and the damn candle still lit and entirely too close to you this time, and I carried you to bed, cleaned up the icecream, put out the candle. Then, I got a phone cube charger and changed it out with the one in the living room. There’s a hidden camera in it. That way, it wasn’t where you bathed and dressed, but if you needed me, I would know.”

I backed up and sank down onto the chair at my kitchen table. “Is that it?” I asked.

“No.”

I braced myself. I wasn’t sure how much of this honesty I could take.

“I’m in love with you.”

He was in love with me. He was telling me that now? After he just admitted to stalking me for two months. My head was swimming. The thoughts of him watching me. The things he had seen.

“I need you to leave. I need to be alone and think,” I told him.

“Don’t do this.” The pain in his voice felt like a hot iron slicing open my chest.

“Leave, Oz. Take the camera and leave the key. Then go.”

“Winslet.”

“Go.”

He walked toward me, and I shook my head.

“No. Don’t.” My words were verging on a shout.

His nostrils flared as he stared at me. I dropped my eyes to the floor. I couldn’t look at him. The pleading and panic on his face were unbearable to see.

“I know that I call you mine. But it’s you who owns me. Don’t shut me out.”

The cracks that had already begun to spider out over my heart were almost on the brink, where it would shatter completely.

“Then, you won’t ignore me the way Alec did when I ask you to please leave.”

My hands fisted at my sides. I could not lift my head and look at him. When his boots moved, it wasn’t toward me. It was away.I listened as he took the cube from the wall and the tiny clang of the key as it dropped to the counter.

When the door opened, I could feel the sob rising in my chest.

“I’ve seen you when no one else has. I know you better than anyone. You don’t have a flaw. But I have many.”

I sucked in a breath silently. The part of me that wanted to jump up and run after him was powerful. But just because I loved him and letting go of him felt impossible, I still needed time to work through all he had told me. I was raw right now. My emotions were so unsure that the edges were frayed. This had been too much. All of it.

The door clicked closed, and I buried my face in my hands. I let the tears fall, holding on to my sob until I was sure he was far enough away that he wouldn’t hear me.

Thirty-Five

Winslet

There was a hollowness inside my chest. I went through the motions. Wishing I had an answer. A way to make it all fit in a way that I could accept or understand. My fear that he didn’t love me at all but that I was an obsession that had spurred unbalanced choices in him had become the thing that haunted me the most. There was no question if I loved him. This had revealed just how deeply I felt for Oz. Because the idea of living without him seemed unbearable. It was my brain that was telling me that big black flag meant a future heartache that I might not survive.

I stared down at my phone and read through the texts he had sent since I had made him leave Saturday night. Every day since, he had texted me in the morning, in the afternoon, and before I went to sleep. Nothing long. No begging forgiveness, no rationalizing his behavior.

Oz

I love you.

Oz

You’re all that I think about.

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