I don’t know how I manage to string words together but I do and I whisper, “You’d think what?”
He looks into my eyes, his finger tracing the curve of my lips. “She laughs like a fairy too.”
My stomach hollows out and I grab onto his wrist with both hands as I say, my body melting, “I forgive you.”
He, on the other hand, goes rigid. “What?”
That’s what I wanted to say to him. That’s what I’d decided this weekend.
That I’d tell him that.
And so I do, even though he’s gone all rigid, all unforgiving. “I-I forgive you. For everything.”
He studies my face with a gaze that has hardened, much like his body. “Everything.”
I was afraid before, to say it.
To actually say the words and make them real.
But I’m not afraid anymore.
I’m not afraid to tell him that I’ve forgiven him because it is the truth. It has been the truth for some time now. Even though he doesn’t look too happy about it. He doesn’t look like he wants to hear it.
I dig my nails into his wrist. “Yeah. I forgive you for breaking my heart two years ago. For lying to me. For using me. For breaking your promises to me and for choosing your vendetta against your dad over me. I forgive you for all that.”
This time his silence is much, much longer.
During which the muscle in his cheek beats like my own heart. It beats like it will rip out of his skin like my heart will rip out of my chest.
“Why?” he asks after a while, somehow with his finger still on my lip, still as tender as ever, so in contrast to his harsh demeanor.
“Because my heart doesn’t hurt anymore,” I whisper, staring into his pretty eyes. “Because ever since you broke it, my heart, two years ago, I’ve been in pain. I’ve been in so much pain, and that’s why I stole your car, to stop it. That’s why I asked you for closure the night when… when we had sex. For the last two years, all I’ve wanted was for the pain to stop. I just wanted my heart to stop hurting and it has. I don’t feel it anymore. The pain. It’s gone.”
“Why?” he asks again. “Why is it gone?”
I go up on my tiptoes to reach him because he looks so far away right now. “Because you took it away. You made it go away. I asked you to do it and you did.”
Isn’t it ironic though?
That the guy who gave me this pain is also the one who took it away. He’s the one who soothed it.
But it only seems to push him further away.
So much so that he breaks out of my hold. He takes his touch away from me and steps back.
The touch that he’d given after weeks, he takes it back in a matter of seconds and my knees feel weak without it.
My body goes cold. My legs tremble.
He stares at me with angry eyes, his stubbled jaw ticking. “And I’m assuming all this forgiveness is because of what I’m doing, is that correct? For driving you around, for bringing you groceries, for taking you to that useless fucking doctor. You think I’m doing this for your forgiveness?”
I don’t know how I can be so calm when he’s like this. Agitated and angry. Callous.
Old Callie would be freaking out. She’d be trembling and maybe even crying at his cold behavior. But I’m not that Callie anymore.
Because of him.
Because I’ve met the villain once and I’ve survived.
That’s what Tempest said and she was right.
I survived him. And I’m stronger now, a lot better for it.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I know you’re doing all this because you want to. You’re doing this because of her.” I cradle my belly and say something that I know in my heart. “Because you love her.”
That throws him.
That makes him take another step back. The word ‘love.’
So along with ‘protect’ and ‘save,’ love is another one of his triggers.
“Don’t you?” I prod, digging my fingers in my bump. “You love her.”
His features ripple with surprise as if this is such news. When it has been apparent to me, to my brothers even, since day one.
That he wants her. Genuinely.
He loves her — as much as I do — and he doesn’t even know if it’s a her yet.
I know he thinks that he doesn’t love anything, that he has no space for love, but he loves her.
His chest is not barren after all. There’s at least one flower in it. For her.
For our baby.
He stares at my belly really hard before looking up. “Yes, I do.”
“I know.”
“She’s mine.”
My eyes sting with happy tears. “She is.”
See? How can I be mad at him anymore for what he did two years ago?
How can I be mad that he never loved me when he loves her?
When he loves our baby.
I can’t. I’m done.
I thought that nothing he could do would make me forgive him. But turns out, all he had to do was love her.
Love this accidental, wonderful gift he’s given me.
I’m done living in the past and thinking of him as my villain. The predator who fed on my heart and left me to die. When he’s also a hero. Her hero, her protector.
He’s both, a gorgeous villain and a haunted hero.
“But that doesn’t mean anything,” he snaps, plowing his fingers through his dark overgrown hair. “That doesn’t mean I want your forgiveness. I don’t. You can fucking keep it. Throw it out the window for all I care.”
I don’t even flinch when he says that.
In fact, I take a step closer to him as I ask, “Why?”
“What?”
I take another step closer. “Why don’t you want it?”
He watches my feet with a thick frown. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Tell me why you don’t want it.”
He watches me take another step toward him and his fists clench. “Are you trying to scare me, Fae? Because I’m not in a mood to laugh.”
I reach him and tilt my head back to look at his beautiful face. “No. I’m asking a question. Tell me.”
His chest moves up and down with his sweet but agitated breath. His nostrils flare as he glances around the room. And it looks like I’ve cornered him. Which is so crazy, because there’s no way I can hold him here or overpower him.
Not him.
The one who’s as tall and broad as the mountains. As wild as a mustang.
“Because I didn’t protect you, all right,” he bursts out. “I couldn’t protect you two years ago and I couldn’t protect you now. Do you understand that? Do you understand what I did to you? I didn’t only break your heart, you had to be caged because of me. Caged. Because I made you steal my car. In a shithole school. When you should’ve been out there, free, dancing like you were born to do. But that’s not all, is it? I stole from you. I stole your virginity. I took it from you. I tore it out of your body until you bled. You fucking bled on my dick and I was too fucked in the head to understand that. I was too fucked and blind and jealous to figure out that the pussy I was plowing into was untouched. And then, I got you pregnant. You’re having my baby, Fae. And it’s so brutal on you and I can’t do anything about it. The fucking doctor can’t do anything about it.”