Page 100 of A Love Like Venom

“It’s not about changing who I am. It’s about wanting to be better. Wanting to be someone good. You deserve someone way better than me but I’m too selfish to let you go.”

“I don’t want you to let me go,” I confess to him on a whisper.

His hand on the back of my neck grows tighter as he groans from deep in his throat. Pressing a kiss to the tip of my nose he then says, “Good because I have no intention on setting you free.”

I smile at that because he has it entirely wrong. I don’t feel captured in his arms, nor do I feel caged. “How can you set me free when I walked in your arms willingly?”

“Fuck, I really don’t deserve you.”

“We are all so worried about what we deserve. Maybe it’s not about that. Maybe it’s about what we choose. I choose you, Reed Carter. I always have. Even when I hated you, I still chose you.” I have never admitted my true feelings towards him. I never once told him I love him. That I am in love with him. Maybe I should. One day. One day soon I will tell him how I really feel. But I just got him back. I just got him back and I don’t want to jeopardize anything.

Perhaps my heart isn’t ready for another rejection no matter how many promises he makes.

Because doubt, such an ugly hideous thing still lives in the back of my mind.

One day I’ll tell him how I feel. Just not today.

Turning his face, he presses a kiss against my palm before leaning back into my hand. “This only proves further that you’re too good for me. But that’s okay because what was it that you called us?” He asks me rhetorically. Then he answers, “A beautiful eclipse.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re mocking me,” I say to him teasingly.

Except he doesn’t take it that way. “I would never make light of something like that. Not about us. Not about you,” he seriously tells me.

My thumb swipes along his jawline. The prickle from his scruff sending tingles down my arm.

The intensity in his gaze is hard to deny. But it does remind me of what Oak told me not too long ago. How he and everyone else only see one version of him. The boy he laughs with a constant smile on his face to deflect what he’s feeling inside.

It has me asking him, “But you have done that, haven’t you? Not of me or us but make light of everything around you. Constantly smiling and laughing.”

He goes to turn his head again, casting his eyes away from mine but I don’t let him. Keeping his eyes on me I tell him, “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Hide from me.”

He swallows. Sighing heavily, he then concedes. “If you pretend that everything is fine then people won’t be concerned about you. It’s the perfect-”

“Mask,” I finish.

“I found it the only way to deal with what was going on inside. No one would understand anyways. And I found it easier to pretend then tell the truth.”

“That sounds like a terrible way to live.”

“But it ensures that no one can hurt you. You wear a mask people can’t get close.”

“You don’t wear a mask with me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Does that scare you? Not being able to hide from me?” I’m both curious and genuinely want to know his answer. I don’t want him to feel like he has to pretend around me, yet I also don’t want him towantto pretend.

“It did at first but I’m learning that it can be a good thing,” he admits.

“What do you mean by that?”

A ghost of a smile appears on his lips as he looks at me in an adoring way. “A smart man once told me caring for people doesn’t make you weak. A girl as strong as you can only make me stronger.”

Ignoring the crazy flutters in my stomach and my erratic heart I question jokingly, “And do I get to meet this intelligent man?”

---