Page 149 of Sinful Desires
I moved back until my spine met the shed wall. The wood pressed warmly against my skin. My lungs forgot what air was supposed to feel like.
His eyes didn’t rage. They burned slowly. Like something sacred was breaking inside him, and he wanted me to see all of it. The hunger. The ache. The sadness.
The unbearable silence he’d swallowed alone.
“You want me to lie and say I didn’t know what my absence was doing to you? That I didn’t hear every goddamn sob through the fucking walls?”
He came closer, breath punching between his teeth.
“Go ahead. Say I ruined you. Say I broke you on purpose. Say I’m a sick bastard who gets hard knowing I’ll never be good enough for you.”
He didn’t blink.
“Say it,” he breathed. “Say it, Scarlett.”
My throat tightened. I almost wanted to, but I laughed instead. Dry and low, with no joy left in it.
“I have nothing left to say to you, Théo.” My chest rose shakily. “I’ve heard enough. Or maybe I haven’t. Maybe I never will. But your silence did the talking for you. And I listened. I heard every hour you weren’t there.”
I could barely look at him.
“I’m over you. You’veneverlet me in. I barely know anything about you.”
His stare didn’t waver.
“I’m done chasing a ghost who never even wanted to be real for me.”
His jaw clenched. His voice came low, frayed at the edges.
“I was a ghost, yeah. But I never fucking left.”
What?
I laughed once, bitterly.
“I never stopped watching you,” he went on. “Every fucking day. Every night. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t earn that right. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I don’t deserve a second of your time.”
He stepped closer, like he couldn’t stop himself.
“I don’t deserve you, Scarlett. Because it’s my fault. All of it. It’s my fault he had the chance to drag you away. It’s my fault I wasn’t there to tear his fucking hands off when he did it.”
A tear slid down my face.
“You think silence means I did nothing,” he said. “But you didn’t see it. What I did. What I gave up. What I bled out behind closed doors to keep you breathing. You never noticed the way my hands were always there even when you thought you were alone.”
My eyes flicked up.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means everything you thought you survived by yourself, every time you thought you were about to break, I was there. You didn’t see it. But I was the reason you got home. The reason no one touched you again. The reason you’re still fucking standing.”
He leaned in closer.
“I have always been there for you.”
My brows furrowed as I tried to make sense of his words.
He didn’t explain.
