Page 52 of Aftersome
“You know what everyone else knows about me.”
My eyebrows dipped downward.
“And whose fault is that?”
I was being an ass, but I wanted to give him a little taste of his own medicine. And by his sudden standstill and the way his shoulders flexed, I knew I had gotten to him.
“You wanna know me, Doe? Is that it?” He dropped his fork into his salad bowl and cocked his head at me.
With his full attention now being directed on me, my skin went up in flames. Though his body was a hell of a distraction, his eyes had stolen my attention.
“Like you’d let anyone see the real you.” I steered clear of his fiery gaze even though I felt tempted to see his reaction. “Like they’d even want to see it.”
I waited for what felt like hours for a response from him. I even thought he had gone back to eating, but when I peered up from my screen to catch a glimpse of him, my heart sank. Cold, detached eyes were locked onto my face, but he wasn’t really looking at me.
Like he was no longer present and had disappeared into his own head.
That’s when guilt suddenly filled me. It began to crest and billow until the words “I’m sorry” were on the tip of my tongue.
“You don’t think this is the real me?” His voice cracked on impact, causing me to flinch. “And if it wasn’t, you’d think I’d let just anyone in? You think I’d want the whole world to see the real me? Fuck no,” he swore. “Fuck that.”
His chest was rising and falling at the same tempo as my heart rate. Even the notorious scar on his eyebrow had a pulse.
“I may be a grumpy asshole, but at least I don’t pretend to be someone I’m not.”
I was at a loss for words, my mind reeling as it was too busy trying to figure out whether or not he was insinuating that I pretended to be someone I wasn’t.
Even if he did think that, why would it matter?
I knew who I was.
“When I’m around you, I feel like I’m going crazy,” he admitted on a low, almost nonexistent breath. Like he didn’t want me to hear it, but I had.
The fight in me was exhausting, and for once I didn’t argue back.
Because I understood.
Instead we locked eyes, a vulnerable moment in what had been a turbulent week for us. There was no disdain. No anger. A shift from our normal scowls and glares that seemed to be permanent whenever we were in the presence of each other. Even for a second there, I felt like I might be looking at the real Mal. The vulnerable Mal.
“Likewise,” I whispered back.
I could no longer hold his gaze as it became too personal. A cruel reminder of the guy I had once known, and in its place, a more disconnected man that I could have ever imagined.
A broken man who never healed. Who never accepted. Who never moved on.
In a world so big and vast, filled with many different kinds of people, Malachi Villareal was the loneliest soul that lived.
An outcast on and off the ice rink.
Too stubborn to change, too damaged to find peace.
It rocked me to my core. He reminded me of myself before Hayes.
Before I broke out into tears, I slammed my computer closed and focused on picking up all my belongings scattered around me.
“I left you something in your passenger seat for the away game tomorrow,” Mal announced as I unzipped my backpack on wrinkled brows.
“What?”
