Page 51 of Unwanted

He continues to torture me with the lightest of touches while his words dig into my deepest wounds.

“Open your eyes.” His voice is as soft as his touch, but the command is loud and clear. It takes everything in me not to listen. Everything in me not to react to his words and his touch.

Defying him is the only armor I have left.

I let my pain slip between my lips too easily, a mistake I don’t want to make again.

Frankie’s fingers drift away from my neck, and I have to repress the jolt that races through me when he moves closer and settles between my spread legs.

My reluctance to open my eyes means I can’t anticipate his next move, and when I feel him press his soft lips to my jaw, every knot inside me tightens.

“Frankie,” I breathe out. “What are you doing?”

“You think leaving you was something I did on a whim? Without a second thought?” There’s an unmistakable vulnerability in his voice now, his bravado and anger now missing. His mouth moves up my jawline. Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.

He stops when he reaches my ear and whispers, “Leaving you broke my heart.”

17

FRANKIE

There was nothing else left to say.

My heart broke the day I broke his, and heneededto know that. If he listened to nothing else, he needed to know his pain was my pain.

His hurt was my hurt.

His heart was my heart.

Everything else was too long or too detailed or too much of a risk to Arlo’s sobriety. He didn’t want to hear my side of the story, and as much as it pains me, I have to let the idea of telling him go.

Stepping away from Arlo, I turn to leave his office. He can’t even look at me, and I’ve said all I needed to say. Whatever I thought was salvageable has now been completely obliterated. There is nothing left of us but rubble and ashes. There is nothing tangible that we can hold on to and put back together.

I press on the handle and pull the office door toward me, when a hand slams against the wood, closing it immediately.

The air thickens around us.

“I want to blame you so fucking much,” he says, his strained voice right behind me, his whole body towering over me. He buries his face in my hair, breathing me in. “I know I needed to get clean,” he says hoarsely. “I know that, but you broke more than my heart when you left, Frankie. You brokeme.”

The anguish in his voice cuts me, deep and to the bone.

“I wanted to stay,” I tell him. “Truly, I did, but–”

He cuts me off. “Don’t. We both know you deserve someone better than a junkie.”

My body tenses at his words and I whirl around in his arms, furious. Taken aback by the change between us, he rears his head.

“You think I left because of your addiction?” I hated the way he perceived himself, and I was not going to contribute to his self-loathing by referring to him as a junkie. “Jesus, Arlo, give me a little fucking credit. It was all a little more complicated than that.”

“It doesn’t even matter why you left.” He’s shaking his head, as if he’s just remembered he never wanted to talk about this in the first place and he needed to end the conversation. “The bottom line is still the same. You. Left.”

There wasn’t going to be a reason in the world that would make Arlo feel differently about himself, I knew that now.

With every addition Arlo made to the conversation, it was clear he didn’t want to hear my reasoning. His distorted view of himself took up too much space and time in his head.

I may have left, and it may have hurt him, but I was sure somewhere along the line he believed his addiction to be the reason he didn’t deserve happiness.

By leaving,Imade him believe he didn’t deserve happiness.

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