Page 39 of Rejected
“You know all this,” Jo said. “You were there. You saw.”
“Ask me to stay,” Laurie said, turning to face her abruptly, his voice gruff, unlike anything she had heard before. “Ask me.”
Jo felt the familiar rage bubble up again, like a thick, black thing, choking her.
“Why do you keep doing that?” she sputtered through gritted teeth.
“Do what?” He asked, all raised eyebrows and perfect, lush lips.
Keep ruining things.
Keep looking at me with those lethal eyes.
Keep existing with that cathedral-sharp jawline.
“Proposing,” she managed to say.
“It’s your fault, Jo,” he said with a deep frown. “It’s all I can think about. You’ve ruined me.”
“When did I do that?”
He made a helpless gesture, tried to laugh. It sounded rather wolfish. Somehow pitiful and savage at the same time. Ridiculous. It sounded ridiculous.
“No specific moment I can think of,” he said. “I was in way over my head, drowning before I knew to save myself. You ruin me just by existing.”
She closed her eyes.
I am going to lose him forever, she thought frantically.He is going to leave me again, and this time I will never see him again. If I can’t give him what he wants, I can’t keep him.
It’s either lose him or lose myself.
She shivered violently, and it was not from the cold. Laurie’s eyebrows knit together.
“You are afraid,” he stated it like a fact, not a question. “What are you afraid of, Jo?”
“Of… of this.”
“Explain.”
“I can’t explain it. I can’t…”I can’t breathe when you are not here,she thought.“This,” she said out loud.
“What this?” His eyes were full of tears now. “Loving me? Are you afr—Of loving me?Answer me!” He was trembling from head to foot, running out of breath. “Answer me.” His voice dropped low, a mere rumble in his throat.
“It’s frightening.” The words were wrought out of her.
“Why?” It sounded like a sob.
Because I lose the ground beneath my feet every time I think of you. Because I lose my very breath whenever I so much as catch a glimpse of your face.
She was so afraid she could not even speak. Afraid of what would come out of her own mouth if she did.
“You will never feel the same, will you?” Laurie murmured. She looked down. “Ask me to stay,” he repeated in this unrecognizable voice that was full of heat and longing and made her legs go weak.
“I can’t do that,” she replied. Asking him to stay would imply that she returned even a fraction of what he had confessed to her that horrible day.
And she didn’t.
I don’t. Not even a little bit.
