Page 71 of The Love You Fight For
His statement echoes in my head, bouncing off the sides of my skull until it aches. I squeeze my eyes shut and press my fingers into my temples, trying to block out his words. Trying to erase the memory of them on his tongue. Trying to forget he ever said them at all.
I need to scream.
I need to knock some sense into myself.
I need to not feelanythingfor this man.
How? How did he get through my defenses? How does he always know what to say to unsettle my carefully crafted façade? How does he know which buttons to push? The most effective ways to seduce me?
How did I get here with him?
If it were anyone else, any other man, I would swear it was a game. A trick. An angle he’s playing to get on my good side, or to get close to my father, or to gain access to the money attached to my family name.
But with Chris? I’m starting to believe he doesn’t care about any of that, and that’s the most terrifying thing of all.
I think of the way he touches me. Like I’m something precious.
The way he treats me. Like I’m something worth protecting.
And god, I want it to be true so badly.
I would go to war for you.
Every man I have ever trusted has let me down in some egregious way. In a way that has left permanent scars. Every single one. No man haseverfought for me. No man haseverseen me as something worth fighting for.
And now? Now, when I might have found someone who does, I don’t deserve him.
When I feel tears leaking down my cheeks, I tell myself it’s just the water from the shower. When I feel my heart breaking in my chest, I ignore it. I force away the truth—that I’m fucking falling for Chris Casper, and it hurts more than anything ever has.
He says he’d fight for me, but my fight is already promised for another, and I don’t have the energy left for anything else. And when he finds out? He’ll realize the person he sees in me is just a figment of his imagination. A side effect of his hopeless romantic state of mind. The woman he sees when he looks at me doesn’t exist.
He wants to see the good in people, but there’s no good to be found in me.
I stay in the shower for a few more minutes. Enough to stop my emotions from spiraling, but not enough to warrant concern.
It’s just a shower, after all. Not an emotional breakdown.
I towel off and get dressed. I avoid looking in the mirror. I don’t know if I could handle what I’d see. I don’t particularly want to look at myself right now.
When I step into the hallway, I run right into Chris as he leaves the living room.
“Good, you’re ready.” He smiles, then shoves a folded blanket into my arms. “C’mon. We’re going fishing.”
My eyebrows scrunch together in confusion.
“I don’t fish,” I say, and he shrugs, his lopsided boy-next-door grin on full display.
“Grab a book from the shelf, then. But I told you I’d take you out on the boat, so we’re going out on the boat.”
He brushes past me without another word and leaves me staring at his back with the blanket in my arms. When the screen door shuts behind him, banging on the wooden frame, it jerks me out of my fog, and I hurry into my room to hunt down my sandals.
He’s already at the boat dock by the time I catch up to him, and he has the wooden shed open and a little aluminum fishing boat in the water. It’s little more than a bucket with a motor.
“That’s your boat? It looks like it will sink if we both get in there.”
He grins.
“It will hold up just fine. I’ve got a speed boat at the marina, but this one will work for now.”
