Page 131 of Reckless Hearts
His shoulders are trembling, and his eyes are bright with tears.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want you to love me,” he says.
29
Marcus
My words hang in the kitchen like a toxic fog. The silence that follows is deafening, broken only by the sound of our still-ragged breathing.
I raise my gaze to Seb and instantly wish I hadn’t.
Because I can’t stand the hurt on Seb’s face. I can’t stand the fact I put it there.
“Why don’t you want me to love you?”
He’s standing there naked, his voice shaking slightly, but his eyes are steady and boring into mine.
I need to be honest with him. I owe him this much, at least.
“Because the last time people loved me, I failed them completely,” I reply.
Seb bites his lip. He bends to pick up his clothes from where they’ve been discarded on the floor.
He cleans himself with a paper towel without any trace of self-consciousness, then pulls on his boxers.
Normally, it’s my job to look after him after we have sex together.
But I don’t move. I completely understand why he needs to do this himself, have some distance from me right now.
Once he’s got his boxers on, he joins me at the table, wincing slightly as he sits.
“You failed them completely? How? I don’t understand.”
Seb is looking at me like I’m a complex problem to solve.
And even among the agony I feel right now, I can’t help a pulse of affection. It’s so typical Seb. Thinking that all he needs to do is collect the facts, so he can come up with a solution.
This man, who is everything bright and good in the world, deserves to know the truth about the person he thinks he loves.
Memories claw inside my brain, screaming to be let out. They’re like wild animals thrashing against the cage I’ve kept them locked in for so long. The bars are bending, warping under the pressure.
I pick up my shorts and pull them on. My hand instinctively seeks the pill bottle nestled in the pocket. With a shaky hand, I retrieve a pill and swallow it. The aftertaste is bitter on my tongue.
“My mother died of an overdose when I was sixteen,” I say, my voice low.
“That’s not your fault,” Seb says immediately.
“Yes, it was my fault. It was completely my fault.” My words are injected with frustration. Because I don’t need him absolving me of my crimes. I know exactly what they are, the depth and darkness of my sins, the stains that nothing can ever wash away
Seb tilts his head, his expression a mix of bewilderment and concern. “How could it be your fault?”
“Because I killed my sister.”
Seb rocks back in his chair, his expression stunned.
And I break. The sob seems to come from a place inside me hollowed out by guilt. It echoes in the empty spaces. My whole body shakes with the force of it, years of carefully constructed walls crumbling like sandcastles in the tide.
