Chapter 34: : Chapter 34

her words. It squeezes itself into a tiny, tight fist, almost denying my body the right to live if I don’t make her needs my first priority.

To think she actually cares enough to fear the loss of me in her life. None of this is easy for her. She’s literally set herself up to fight these feelings. She’s being pushed and pulled, wanting love, being terrified of it, and yet craving it, knowing it has the capacity to end her.

Everything with us is so complex. So complicated. None of it’s as easy as “hey, I love you,” and “that’s awesome, I love you back.” Nah. With us, you have to pull the weeds out before you plant the pot. The weeds left behind in the soil we’ve rooted, slowly attempt to strangle out the growth we have formed between us. But despite that, we fight. We fight and we fight to continue growing, because we just can’t give up on each other.

I could never leave. I could never walk out of this door with her so torn. The look of torture in her eyes, the pain from watching me destroy myself, it affects me more than anything else. I’ve never felt it the way I feel it from her. Not when Hawke’s tried, even Cole…it doesn’t hit the same. But watching her break down because of me? Well, it only reminds me of how I felt when I saw her bleeding.

It broke me. Terrified me. I couldn’t stand the sight of her being hurt by something that was, at one point, meant for fun. It made me pause; made me think. But clearly, not enough. She’s watching me self-destruct, and the pain of that is a reminder of the demons of her past.

I sigh, licking my lips before walking back over to her position on the edge of the bed. I drop between her legs, resting on my knees before her. Her eyes are sealed shut, her lips slightly parted as the breaths fall from this sweet, tortured soul.

My hand finds the leg she’s hanging off the bed. Slowly touching her little ankle, I trail my fingers up her smooth skin in a steady line. The fingers reach her knee as she sucks in a quick breath, releasing it along with some of her anger as well. The tension in her eyes relaxes some as my palm fits over her kneecap. I run my thumb over it, seeing a deep scar across it. Running circles over the scar, I lean my head down, pressing my lips softy against it, kissing the wound from a previous time. A past I’d do anything to know about. A time I wish I could’ve known her, just so I could have cared for her like she’s cared for me.

I’ve never wanted to know so much about another person like I do Han. My need to know weird intricate facts about her that no one else could ever know has me wondering about the line between love and obsession. I want to know what songs she listens to when she’s sad, what tastes make her hum and sigh with pleasure, what memories from her childhood she cherishes most. I want to drown myself in every aspect of her, every detail, every situation that’s made her the curious creature before me. The one I can’t ever get off my mind. The woman who quite literally owns me entirely.

I gaze up from my position below her, a soft, emphatic, sorrowful look emitting from my core. My heart is racing with an anxiousness I’ve never known. She finally blinks her gorgeous green eyes open. The dark browns swirled into her forest greens, with the hints of amber that light my soul on fire, are nearly sponged out by the reddened veins of agony surrounding them. Her suffering radiates around me as she stares at me.

I wince, sitting on the floor between her legs, resting my head against her opened thigh. Keeping our eye contact, my hand traces little circles along the inside of her leg in a gentle, soothing touch. Everything I’m doing is an attempt to physically communicate that I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I know it hurts. Everything it going to be fine. I’ve got you. You are mine, and I am yours.

She sighs again, and I feel another chip of the iceberg slowly slide into the ocean around her, melting away the exterior she’s had years to form. Her hand finds my hair, fingers slowly raking through the white blonde mess atop my head as she combs through it. Her eyes study me, memorizing color, counting strands, maybe internalizing how she’s feeling with me right here.

Massaging my scalp with her long nails, I close my eyes, loving the soft and intimate sensation. I take a deep breath, feeling so much better than I did a minute ago, just with her hand on me. I instantly feel the comfort of being where I’m supposed to be. Her thumb rubs ever so slightly on my forehead, gently brushing back and forth until she runs across my eyebrow again. I wince when she touches the cut there, propping my head up. She licks her thumb again to wipe away more dried blood.

Our silence is so loud. Our hearts both pounding through the cages in our chests, attempting to touch, needing to align. It’s surreal, really, being able to say so much without saying anything at all. Making promises with nothing but our soft and gentle movements, subtle cues that express what words could never.

I bring myself to my knees again, sliding my hands around her little waist. Wrapping my long, gangly arms around her, I pull her into me. One of her arms wraps around my back, and the other hand finds my hair again, her fingers threading through it and gripping onto me. I can hear her heart pounding in her chest from here, see the war raging on inside of her little frame.

A minute goes by of us holding on to each other, and then another, before I pull my head back to find her eyes. I see her heart fighting against her mind, watch as it calms down with my arms around her.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “For ever making you feel like you’d lost me.”

She swallows before sucking on the corner of her bottom lip, looking down into her lap.

“I wondered if you’d be there when Sid begged me to come yesterday. I didn’t expect to see you,” she breathes. “And then when I saw you with her…I assumed you came together.”

Her eyes dart wildly back and forth between mine now. Her tough exterior shatters before me like a broken mirror of false reflections.

“It fucking ripped me apart,” she admits, her voice breaking.

Her words are filled with an achingly desperate tone that catches me off guard. This wasn’t just a cute little game to her. The idea of me with Brynn, someone she believes deserves me, destroyed her. Every joke, every shitty tease that I said while we were fucking tore into her. I had no idea. My brow furrows as I attempt to really understand her. She’s never been so honest, so upfront.

“It wrecked me. The idea you’d believed the truth of my words, that you deserved her. That you’d finally came to your senses and realized that maybe I wasn’t worth all the trouble, the complications.” Her lips part open as the memory rips through her again, her chest rising and falling quicker than before. “That you would be happier…without me.”

She’s never felt worthy of what she so often fights off. She pushed me away, thinking I’d leave for good, not realizing just how fucking crazy I am about her, how I’d literally do anything just to have a piece of her.

I sit in silence, just listening to her pour herself out to me. The woman who holds it all in.

“I was about to leave. I told Sid I was out when I saw you cuddled up with Tarah and them outside. I couldn’t take any more,” she whispers, the pain etched across her face as she looks to the ground. “But once I’d finally told myself to go, I saw you in the hallway.” She looks up at me.

I catch her gaze, instantly feeling like an asshole.

“I knew something was wrong, and I couldn’t leave you.” Her hands cup the sides of my face, the memory destroying her. “I couldn’t leave.”

I swallow down her pain.

“Then I drew the attention of Bran and I knew…” She sighs, her eyes screwing shut again, pulling back.

“That wasn’t your fault,” I whisper.

“And he just—” She chokes on a sob that breaks free from her chest. “He just kept hitting you, and you weren’t even moving.”

She cries into her hands, traumatized by witnessing it all right in front of her, feeling the heaviness of the guilt that came with that entire shit show. She sniffles, attempting to pull it together before searching my eyes for something. Her past is there again, behind those broken eyes.

“You can’t leave me too, Kai.”

I stare up at her in disbelief at the words coming out of her mouth. I lightly shake my head with my mouth parted, witnessing her pain while I study her. I’m just in shock, but I didn’t miss the fact that she said “too”.

“Your words, your questions…the way you don’t pull back, the intensity in which you love…you’re so intense,” she continues, her jaw growing tight with emotion.

“I told you, I wouldn’t stop. I won’t give up,” I say, rising to my knees to meet her, resting my forehead against hers. She takes another breath, attempting to control her emotions.

“Remember when I told you in the water after we first met that you were insane?” I grin a little at the memory, holding her face to mine. “You asked me, what is sanity?”

She finds my eyes, nodding her little head against mine.

“If sanity is the ability to act in a normal, rational manner, exhibiting reasonable behavior, then it’s more than obvious,” I say, before kissing the tip of her delicate nose. “I’m insane for you,” I whisper. “Completely and unavoidably insane.”

Her large doe-like eyes blink as she swallows, taking it all in. Just as the overwhelming feeling of love washes over her like a warm wave, I see her past cross over her vision like a veil that never retreats. I can literally feel when she’s thinking about it, wondering how it will change things, and unsure of where it will leave us once exposed. There’s so much fear in something she can’t control.

“Nothing from your past is going to push me away. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s your darkness that pulls me in, Han.”

I think about how Bran used it against her, knowing it’s such a deep part of what makes her the person she is, and then fucking throwing it in her face like a toy used to tease. A heart like hers doesn’t deserve that. It’s weak, yet trying.

“There’s so much you won’t understand,” she says, her eyes filled with a new form of sadness, the depleted kind.

“Give me the chance,” I whisper against her lips.

“You can’t fix me,” she says immediately.

“I don’t want to,” I say, wincing as I place both hands on the sides of her neck, my thumbs tracing her chin. I lick my lips, peering at hers, then back into her troubled eyes, the ones that scream out for me and me alone. “I want to break with you.”

She closes her eyes tightly, turning to look away from me as her bottom lip trembles, but I have her chin. I guide her face back to mine, forcing her to look at me.

“We fix each other, but only after all the pieces have broken, all the cracks in place.” I mutter the words of a wise old man, feeling their weight now more than ever.

Her face drains of color and looks as though she’s seen a ghost.

“Where did you hear that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I answer, moving closer until our lips are grazing one another’s again. “The truth is, I just need you, Han. Whatever way I can get you, it’ll be enough.”

She sucks in a breath as our foreheads seal together again.

“Please don’t fall away. Please don’t fight this. Just please,” I beg, searching her for any lingering doubts. “Let me in. It’s all I need.”

“Kai,” she whispers between breaths, and I’m waiting for the hit, waiting for the crushing statement to ruin me all over again.

I continue to set myself up for this rejection and failure with her because I’m hopelessly in love. Am I a masochist for her sweet torture? Possibly. But in some shape or form, I need to be in her life just as she needs to be in mine.

We both have our issues that we see reflected in each other. We bring them forward in a way no one else ever could. Exposing our truths and ripping ourselves raw of the shields we’ve spent so much time creating, finally allowing the facts to pierce through us.

A tear falls from her eye, rolling down her cheek as her eyes pierce through mine. Her hands find my face and she holds me to her. “I’ve never wanted to not need someone more.”

The truth in her eyes electrifies the deepest, darkest part of me. We aren’t perfect. We’re totally fucked up in our own right. We’ve never got it right, nor will we, and yet we can’t stop. I’ll forever push her until she breaks and she’ll forever bend me until I fold. We’re so wrong for one another and yet never have two people ever fit together so miserably well.

She’s the darkness, and I’m the light. We aren’t meant to exist together in the same space, and yet we find all the ways in which we can bleed together in order to be one and the same.

But not even the brightest lights can stay lit forever.