Page 77 of Breaking You Open

“And how did I lie exactly?”

“You told me I should never let anyone take advantage of me. That I shouldn’t let people fuck me while I was asleep or drunk. You said you’d never hurt me like that. But you lied.” Sparrow wraps his arms around himself, and now he looks more sad than pissed off.

I try to grab hold of him again, and again he evades me. “Let’s talk about this in the back room.”

“No.” Sparrow shakes his head, backing away from me. “I don’t want to talk to you. How can I trust you when everything you’ve said to me so far is a lie?”

“I haven’t fucking lied to you!” I bellow. “You’re the one who begged me to let you stay with me, to take care of you. And that’s what I’ve been fucking trying to do, you ungrateful brat.”

“But you’ll hurt me. You’ve already hurt someone.”

“Hurt who?” Fuck, is he talking about Justin? How did he find out?

He lifts his shoulders in a miserable shrug. “That Nathan guy. He told me.”

I sigh and rake my hands through my hair. “Well, he wanted it.”Hewas the one to saunter into this very bar, order two shots, and down them both.Hewas the one to chat me up.Hewas the one to show up out of nowhere, pull me away from my chat with friends, and drag me into the secluded room of Joshua’s house. Besides, I…“I didn’t even go through with it.”

“Yeah, but you would have, right?” Sparrow says, tears glazing his eyes. “If you weren’t interrupted. You lied to me. What else have you lied about?”

“Sparrow, for fuck’s sake…” I grab hold of him again, harder this time, squeezing his upper arms so tightly he can’t get away. I feel like shaking him. What doesn’t he fucking understand?

“Let me go,” he whimpers. “You’re hurting me, Louis.”

His blue eyes flash in my mind and merge with a long-suppressed memory—a memory of my younger self, and the person I loved staring up at me with fear and hurt in his eyes…Justin…I hurt him…And now…now I’m doing the same to…

Eyes wide, I let go of Sparrow as if he burned me.

The few people left at the bar have stopped talking to stare at our debacle. Even Ravi stops chatting up some woman to approach us instead.

“Louis, what’s going on?” He lays a hand on Sparrow’s shoulder. “You okay, kid?”

Sparrow visibly relaxes, and that expression combined with that single familiar touch sets a fire in me I’m helpless to control. Everything is turning to shit, and the realization dawning on me is the icing on the fucking cake.

Sparrow is more comfortable with Ravi than he is with me. Maybe that’s the way it’s always been; I’ve just been too blind to see it.

I scare Sparrow, and I hurt him, and even though his angelic heart has tried to ignore it, once he realizes his own worth, there’s no way he’ll put up with me. And that’s exactly what’s happening. I saw it coming from the very start, but I thought…Fuck, I don’t know. I knew I was bad. I knew I was horrible. But to see it confirmed in that minuscule flash of relief in Sparrow’s eyes hurts more than a thousand beatings, more than the deepest wound, more than the time I witnessed my father dunk my mother’s head into a wall.

Seeing red, I take a step closer and snarl to Ravi, to my best friend, “Lay a hand on him again, and I’ll fucking end you.”

Ravi’s mouth stiffens into a tight line. “I think you need to calm the fuck down, Louis.”

I glare daggers at both of them, chest heaving and fists clenched at my sides.

“You don’t have anything to say?” Sparrow asks, tears glittering in his eyes as his plump lower lip trembles.

Fuck, he’s so beautiful. I knew all along that I didn’t deserve him, and this does nothing but set that fact in stone.

“Just go, then,” I mutter.

His mouth falls open. “W-What?” he croaks.

“Just leave.”

He’s better off somewhere else. With someone else. I knew it all along, but my delusional mind granted me these scant few months to find refuge in this miraculously trusting, beautiful boy. But the world’s judgment would always fall down on me sooner or later, and now it’s telling me to protect Sparrow from myself, once and for all.

“I don’t want to see your face in here again,” I grit out.

“Louis …,” Ravi says.

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