“Maybe,” I admitted. “But, I’ll never believe you.”
He gripped my shoulders. “Leave with me now. Run away with me.”
“What?” I shoved him off. “No.”
“You said you wanted me. You said you loved me. You…” he trailed off. “I opened up to you. You…you—” West broke off, stepping back.
The crashing of the waves amplified the silence. I looked around, realizing we were only a few feet from the clearing where West had taken me after throwing down his coin.
His brows caved, and he looked at me, hurt and heartbroken. “You lied?”
I didn’t realize, until that moment, all the secrets I’d been keeping. It was like a floodgate opened in my chest. They were hidden even from me, hiding behind all the rust in my heart.
West didn’t take the most important part of me, he didn’t even take the second most. I needed to stop feeling like just because he stole that part of me, he stole all of me.
“It hurts being lied to, doesn’t it?” I asked, voice hoarse. “Well, good. Because it hurts sleeping in your bed. It physically hurts. My gut spasms all night. When you make me crawl under your sheets, it feels like they’re crawling under my skin. I hate it.”
“That’s a lie. You laugh when you’re with me. You smile. You kissed me! You’ll grow to love it. You’ll grow to love me.”
“Get this through your fucking head: you raped me, West. You raped me.”
West was right. I did need to fall for him, and I do need to bleed.
Because I wanted him out of me forever, and you couldn’t rip someone out without spilling blood.
Fifty-Two
STORY
“I love you, you’re it for me.” West grabbed my biceps, eyes burning as he spoke. “Every single thing I do for you is out of love. How the fuck could I rape you, Story?”
Just a few months ago, I would’ve frozen at his words, unable to acknowledge the ugly truth keeping my heart captive in a rusted cage. He did love me, even as he had done the unthinkable, and I had loved him, even after he did it.
“I know you didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did. It happened. If you accidentally hit someone with a car, you still hit that person with a car.”
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
The wrinkle in his brow deepened, and he let me go, stepping back.
“I figured it out. I don’t love you. I don’t like you. I don’t even hate you. I used to. I used to love you a lot…and then I hated you. When you raped me, when you ghosted me, it broke a little piece inside of me. Then you came around again acting sweet, and that little piece started to feel like it could heal, like maybe I could fix it. But that’s not love.”
I think, also, if I leaned on West to fix what was broken inside of me, then it wasn’t really fixed. I was still broken, I was just using him to hold those pieces together. And maybe…maybe I'm never supposed to fix it. Some things were meant to be broken, because through the cracks we see the light.
West dragged a hand through his fluffy curls, staring at the sand. It was dark without the moon for light, and the wind was a lone wolf’s howl. With no rain, and nothing save the wind agitating sand and waves, the night was a restless ghost finally being heard.
I was a restless ghost finally being heard.
“I know you have good in you.” I stepped through a flurry of dark sand. “Your father tried to muddy your morals, but you should be a good person. That’s not the problem. The problem is, I keep trying to write you as my hero, but to me you have to be a villain. You can’t be anything else.”
I placed my hand on his cheek, and West’s brows caved further, until there was nothing left of his mask. No arrogance, no smirk, just pain. He was the boy who’d asked me for a light years ago, who’d once been my only friend, who’d saved my gum wrappers for years.
“I see now that you were in my heart, but you never even touched my soul.”
I could see the rusted pieces of my heart flaking off, disappearing into the storming sky, like the ashes of sand in the wind. My hand slipped from his cheek, but his overcame mine, forcing it flat on his cheekbone.
“Why?” He pressed against my hand until I was sure it had bruised his face. “Why can’t you just give me another chance? I’ll be better. I’ll do better.”
“I can’t give you a chance when I have no chance to give! Even if the past never happened. Even if I’d loved you without a broken heart. Even if you’d loved me all these years earnestly, wildly, you would still lose, West. You are where I wrote once upon a time, he is where I write happily ever after.”
In an instant, the boy I’d once known vanished. I tore at my hand but he kept it pinned.
“Let me go.”
With his other hand, West gripped the back of my head, holding me captive. Captive to the pain and helplessness in his eyes.
“You want me to be the villain?” he growled.
My heart dropped. “Don’t do this.” Be better.
“Fine, Story. I’ll be the fucking villain.”
He crashed his lips against mine. Ugly. Brutal. I struggled against him, and he forced his mouth harder against mine.
I felt the wetness on my cheeks first, then the salt hit my lips.
Tears—his.
Then West was gone, pulled off of me in what felt like a gust of wind. I had a split second to see his face. The tears reflecting in the black night, before he was yanked further away. Thrown to the sand.
Grayson.
Grayson had been the unseen force pulling West off me. He caged West, legs on either side of his torso. The wind whipped blond hair wildly around his face—his profile seen in carved and vicious glimpses.
An angry god dispensing justice.
“And the prince saves the princess.” West laughed. “But what are you going to do tomorrow? When nothing fucking changes?”
Grayson grinned, mean. “I don’t give a flying shit about tomorrow. All I care about is now. Seeing your bones break like you’ve been breaking her heart.”
“Grayson? How are you here—how did you find me?” Grayson rolled his neck at my questions, eyes laser-focused on West.
“Look away, Snitch.” His voice made my gut clench. Deadly.
“Grays—”
“Look away,” he growled, then slammed his fist into West’s face.
Fifty-Three
GRAY
The crunch of his bones against my fist, the splatter of his blood black on the sand. This moment was an inevitability come to its conclusion. From the minute I overheard her truth, to every broken look after. Her letters were kindling piling higher and higher.
Dear Atlas, I need you.
Snick. Flash. Boom.
Slam. “Stop.”
He’s right, it whispered. You’re bad, it whispered.
Slam. “Fucking.”
If I make a mistake, does that mean I’m not worthy of loving you anymore?
Slam. “With.”
I want him, but I don’t…want him. I want to carve the rust off my heart.
Slam. “Her.”
One final punch, and I curled my hands around his throat.