Page 144 of Collision
“I wanted to challenge myself.”
My eyebrows shoot up incredulously. “Did you really readPride and Prejudice?” The mental image of it is almost enough to make me laugh in his face.
He stares down at the book I hold in my hands. Some locks of my hair have fallen over the cover, and he takes a strand, twisting it around his finger as he seems to consider something.
“It smells like you, you know?” He lifts his face and our eyes lock. “Sometimes, when I was reading it, it almost felt like you were there.” I swallow and blink, staggered by the sweetness in his voice.
“Smelled like me,” I correct him nastily, trying to hide the emotion in my voice. “Did…did you at least like it?” What I would actually like to ask him is why he was thinking about me when we weren’t talking to each other.
“Fuck, not even a little.” He chuckles.
“Why did you decide to give it back to me now?”
As I stare into his eyes, I realize that a part of me is desperatelyhoping that he did it because he felt an irrepressible urge to be near me.
“I don’t know, I had nothing else to do.” My throat burns and I, for the thousandth time, am left feeling like a prize idiot.
“You had nothing else to do?” I repeat with disappointment. He gives a surly nod. And I explode: “You know, I should really thank you for going to the trouble of bringing me back my favorite book—which now, thanks to you, will have to be thrown away—at one in the morning in a rainstorm. But the truth is, gratitude is the last thing you deserve from me.” I stare ferociously at him before standing up and turning my back on him. Just as my fingers touch the handle of the door, Thomas grabs my wrist and stops me. “Let me go!” I warn him, wounded.
“Will you stop for a second?” He pulls me close to him and wraps his muscular arm around my waist, squeezing me like a vise.
“Why should I stop?” I press my palms to his chest in an attempt to create some distance between our bodies, but he won’t let me. “The last time we spoke, you were awful, and now you show up here in the middle of the night just to insult me and return a ruined book!”
“I’m a fucking dick, I know that,” he admits, looking into my eyes so intensely that I can’t help but waver. “It’s not true that I had nothing else to do. I wanted to see you and I thought the book could be a valid excuse for it.” One corner of his mouth lifts in his usual crooked smile. And I find myself forced once again to summon all my willpower in order not to completely fold in the face of his incredible damned charm.
“And the urge to see me came upon you at one o’clock in the morning? Were you too busy before? And you also have my phone number, apparently. You could have called, texted…basically anything.” I am no longer willing to be anyone’s last resort.
“I spent the weekend in my dorm, catching up on my classes from last week. In the evening, the boys asked me to join them at the Marsy. I didn’t really feel like it, but I was hoping I’d be able to catch you there. But you weren’t there. On the bright side, I was able to get your number from Matt.”
I sigh, trying to figure out whether he’s telling the truth.
“I find it hard to believe you. With Travis, I was fooled for too long.I won’t let it happen again.”
“I’m not him!” he exclaims angrily, his jaw twitching.
“You keep saying that, but you’re just as distant and domineering as Travis. Not to mention the fact that I never know what’s going on in your head.”
“What is unclear to you?” He scowls, letting my wrist go. I shrug and sit back down on the sofa. Thomas kneels down again to look me in the eye. A gust of wind brings his scent to me, fresh and intoxicating.
“Why are you so insistent on having me if you don’t care about me? I mean, what you’ve asked me for…you could get it from anybody.”
“But I want it from you,” he breaks in.
“I don’t get why. You said it yourself: you’ll never be able to give me what I want, just like I’ll never be able to give you what you want. We are an unmitigated disaster together, Thomas. For one thing, we never agree on anything. I am awkward, boring, and incapable of shutting up, which, by the way, pisses you off almost all the time. You, on the other hand, are handsome, popular, and confident. People respect you. So many girls are into you, girls way more confident and experienced than me. And what do you do? Waste your time with someone like me. Come on, look at me, and look at you. You can see for yourself that something isn’t right, can’t you?”
He cocks his head to one side and stares at me. “I could say the same thing to you.”
I blink, confused. “Meaning?”
With one elbow resting on his knee, he fiddles with a tuft of my hair. “How is it possible that you don’t know…” he says, lifting his face toward me. “You think I just want you for your body? Not at all. If I just wanted to fuck, I could pick up the phone right now.” He pulls it out of the back pocket of his jeans. “Call the first number in my contacts.” He swipes one finger across the phone and selects a name. “And spend the night with some random girl.” He looks at me in silence for a few seconds while I stare uneasily back at him. He tosses the cell on the cushion next to me. “But that’s not what I want. Because none of them are you.” He takes my face between hishands and with a thumb he caresses my cheek, following the line of my cheekbone and pausing to look at me, specifically at my mouth. “The more time I spend with you, the more I want you. But I am also well aware of how wasted you are on me. I know it every time I look at you, every time you get close to me, every time I hear you talk or touch you. Every time I force you to deal with a heartless bastard like me. You could have so much more than this, you deserve more than this. And you know it. Yet, you keep trying to see something in me. Something good, but you’ve got it wrong. The person in front of you is just a fucking disappointment.”
“Stop saying that. You are not a disappointment.”
“Stop idealizing me.”
The coldness in his voice cuts straight to my heart. Why is it so hard for him to see what I see? Sure, he’s not a perfect guy, I realize that, but I know that there is good in him. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it.
“Then I just don’t understand what you want me to do. Basically, why did you come here? Why are you telling me all this? Are you asking me to accept you as you are or are you telling me to let you go?”
