Page 32 of Better as It

I feel tears, real ones building. I keep going. “I love you,” I admit, voice low. “With everything I am, I love you more than anything I’ve ever touched. Love can’t fix damaged. And I’m too broken to take you down with me, darlin’.”

She shifts and I feel like the coward I am. Her lips forming my name in her sleep, another reminder why I have to walk away. It twists inside me, this need to be who she wants and the knowledge that I never can be.

She trusts me with her heart. She trusted me with her body, parts of her untouched, sacred, and untamed. The moment, I crossed that line, I claimed something I had no right to. But I did it anyway. Because the moment she’s in my space I’m weak. I’m reckless, selfish, and every kind of wrong.

I stand up again.

“I won’t do this to us again,” I promise the darkness, “No matter how hard it is, I won’t look back. I won’t stir up your world again. I’m sorry, Dia. I’m sorry I can’t be the man for you.”

I grab my cut from the back of the chair, slipping it on like armor. The weight of it reminding me who I am. What I am.

A Hellion.

A man tied to chaos, commanding it even with blood when necessary.

A man who gave up the right to softness the first shot I took ending a life in combat as a nineteen year old marine.

A man who won’t taint her beauty anymore.

I pause at the threshold, glancing back. She’s rolled to her back, her hand resting over the place where I lay not long ago. She doesn’t know it yet, but this is goodbye.

“I’m sorry.” I whisper.

I’m sorry I looked at her as my salvation.

I’m sorry for allowing myself to believe I could have more.

I’m sorry for every kiss and every time I touched her like she was mine.

She’s not. Maybe she never was.

She belongs to someone better. To a life with hope and mornings that don’t start with a man leaving for a run that may not bring him home.

The club is part of me. I can’t outrun it and I don’t want to. The things I’ve done can’t be undone.

I exit her room and then her home. The cold hits me like a sharp slap in the face. I relish the pain.

There’s no going back now.

I start my bike, the rumble echoing far too loud close to her window. I wait, hoping she doesn’t stir and she sleeps soundly. Then part of me hopes.

I hope maybe she sensed it. When I told her no more but she’s challenged me time and again reminding me every chance she can that we are good together. Maybe she knows this is it. Maybe some part of her always knew we couldn’t work.

A love like this. A love like ours, wild and painful, draped in silence, it doesn’t get a happy ending.

It just burns until it flickers out.

And all that is left is the smoke and ashes.

I hear her stir. She mumbles something, eyes fluttering. I move to the floor beside the couch, sit there, one arm on the cushion.

“You’re not alone,” I whisper. “I’m here, darlin’. And I’m not going to leave again.”

She nods, eyes half-lidded, not even awake enough to answer. But I’ll say it again when she is.

And I’ll keep saying it until she believes me.

TEN

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