Page 67 of Charmingly Obsessed
“You’re insane. I—I’m not blind. I can see… I can see this is… it can’t be true. It just can’t.”
He laughs then—a harsh, bitter, broken sound right in my face. His forehead thumps against the wall behind me as he leans in, caging me. His body radiates a desperate, almost painful heat. The laugh pours out of him, raw and self-deprecating.
And I feel like I’m suffocating inside this ridiculous, violently pink, rhinestone-encrusted parachute of a jacket.
“Yeah, it can’t be true. It can’t be true, butwhy, Diana? Why the hell not? You think I’m some kind of… of emotionally stunted clown? Incapable of serious feelings?”
“You’ve completely lost your mind,” I whisper, but the naked, undeniable truth blazing in his eyes is unavoidable.
It seeps into me, a slow, insidious heat, sweeping away everything in its path. And the dam inside me, the one I’ve so carefully constructed over years of loneliness and disappointment, is beyond repair. It’s crumbling. Shattering.
It seeps into me—a slow, insidious heat that sweeps away everything in its path. The dam inside me, the one I’ve so carefully built over years of loneliness and disappointment, is beyond repair. It’s crumbling. Shattering.
“You,” he suddenly growls, his voice a low, menacing rumble. He clenches his teeth so hard I stare in morbid fascination, half-afraid they might break.
“You thought I kissed you as a joke. That first time. In the kitchen. Kissed you! As a fucking joke! And that I’m mocking you now, right? With this… this declaration? You always think I’m mocking you, don’t you? No matter what I do.”
He leans even closer, his presence overwhelming.
“You thought that just now, with the ‘madly obsessed’ bullshit, didn’t you? Didn’t you?!”
“I—I…” My voice fails me. “What else was I supposed to think, Mykola? After… after everything?”
He shakes me then. Shakes me hard.
He’s gathered so much of the hideous pink faux-fur fabric of this jacket in his fists that he could probably make two entirely new, equally offensive coats from it.
“That I want you, for example!” he rasps, his face inches from mine. His eyes burn with a desperate, almost painful intensity. “That maybe—just maybe—after last night, after everything we just… did… it actually could be true?!”
He almost screams the words, then visibly pulls himself back from the brink, his chest heaving.
“Or what, Diana? Maybe you don’t want to know that? Maybe it’s too unplanned for you, huh? Too messy? Too much of me, right?”
It’s like the hair near his temples, usually hidden by his artfully tousled sandy hair, has suddenly turned white with strain. He doesn’t look so tanned anymore, so golden. He looks… pale. Exhausted. Stripped bare.
I barely stop myself from reaching out, from touching his cheek, from offering some stupid, inadequate comfort. I can’t fully grasp that any of this is really happening.
It feels like a fever dream. A beautiful, terrifying, intoxicating fever dream.
“I want to know. I just… I don’t understand. I don’t understand you, Mykola.”
“Diana.” His mouth twitches—a strange, almost spastic movement. He presses our foreheads together, hard, like we’re about to engage in some primal, head-butting wrestling match.
“You don’t need to understand me to feel it,” he says, his voice low and strained. “To… to believe it.” He exhales tiredly, a shudder running through his powerful frame. It’s asif he’s fighting against himself—against some internal demon—squeezing me harder, holding me tighter.
“You don’t need to understand emotions to experience them, to accept them. You can’t just… plan them out on one of your goddamn spreadsheets!”
“I am experiencing emotions!” I can’t hold it in anymore. The frustration, the confusion, the overwhelming, terrifying hope—it all bursts out. I grab the front of his soft grey t-shirt, fisting the fabric in my hands.
“I’m experiencing them right now, you infuriating, magnificent bastard! Can’t you see?”
And then… then I start shaking him. Trying to shake him. Pulling and tugging at his shirt, at his shoulders. He stops my hands, his grip gentle but firm. And I stop him, my hands tangling in his hair. And we kiss…
…yes, we kiss. We move, somehow — stumbling, clinging — toward the living room, toward the enormous plush velvet couch that witnessed our earlier… activities.
I grab his hair, pulling and twisting, refusing to let go even as he comes down on top of me. His weight is a delicious, possessive pressure, pinning me to the soft cushions.
Mykola pulls off my hideous pink jacket with a grunt and tosses it to the floor. My boots follow. And then… we stop trying to rush. To finish. To conquer.
