Page 37 of Make Me Sin (Bad Habit 2)
His lashes flutter. In a low, choked voice that sounds like it rises from the deepest pit of hell, A.J. answers, “Being near you makes me want to die.”
Pain pierces my heart. Tears well in my eyes. No one has ever said anything even remotely like that to me before, and it hurts so much I’m breathless. I’m being hollowed out by knives.
“Why?”
He laughs. Somehow it’s even worse than what he’s just told me. The sound is vicious, heartless, totally without mercy. “Because you have a smile like a sunrise and eyes that could end all wars, and you have no idea, you have no fucking clue, that when you look at me, you’re looking at a dead man.”
His face twists with misery. His eyes are wet. When he speaks, his voice cracks. “But mostly because you give me hope. You fucking haunt me with hope. And I can’t forgive you for that. Now get the hell out and don’t ever come back!”
He shoves me through the door, out into the hallway. He slams the door in my face. He turns the deadbolt with a decisive, dismissive clack.
I stare openmouthed at the door. Seconds pass to a minute.
From behind the closed door, A.J. roars, “GO!”
I’m jolted into motion by the fury in his shout. I turn and flee, running at top speed. My footsteps pound down the empty corridor. My vision wavers from all the water pooling in my eyes. I take the staircase three stairs at a time, stumbling and cursing, hanging on to the gritty handrail and holding back sobs, until I burst through the front door. I stop to catch my breath on the porch, leaning over with my hands on my knees.
Music blasts at top volume from upstairs.
I lift my head, listening. It’s not opera this time, but a rock song. As soon as the bass joins in, I recognize it, and the knife twists a little deeper into my guts.
It’s Love and Rockets, my favorite band. The song?
“Haunted.”
The tears I’ve been holding back finally succeed in breaking out and spill down my cheeks. I straighten and run all the way back to my car.
I don’t look back once.
I stand in front of the bathroom sink, staring at my reflection in the mirror. My face is twisted in misery. My lip quivers. My eyes are red and wild.
The hand holding the blade to my throat shakes so hard I cut myself. A single drop of crimson wells from my skin, slides down five inches of sharpened steel, and drops off the end. It lands in the sink with a soft purple splash.
I can do it. I need to do it. I need to do it now, while I still have any control left.
She’s been gone ten minutes, but her colors still blind me. Her colors are everywhere, saturating everything, the air itself. She shows up at my door like an apparition, like a demon, promising everything with those goddamn swimming-pool blue eyes, those beautiful, innocent eyes, and she makes me want to kill myself.
Worse, she makes me want to fall on my knees and beg for a forgiveness I know will never come, because it isn’t deserved.
Ready now, I inhale. I press the blade harder against the pulse in my throat. Just one flick of my wrist. A single, effortless slice—
Bella pads into the bathroom. She sits at my feet. She looks up at me, wags her tail, and whines.
She’s hungry.
Trembling, I slowly lower the blade from my skin. My laugh is shaky, and sounds just this side of insane.
I drop the bloodied blade into the sink, and go to make dinner for my dog.
There’s always tomorrow.
I spend the weekend cleaning my apartment and licking my wounds.
The encounter with A.J. has left me so raw I don’t trust myself to talk to anyone. So I hide, ignoring phone calls, scrubbing the kitchen floor, reorganizing my closet, and dusting things that haven’t been dusted since I moved in. It’s therapeutic. By Sunday night I’ve regained some semblance of my former sense of balance. I sit down with a glass of chardonnay at the kitchen table to think.
I’ve had my fair share of boyfriends—not as many as Grace, lord knows, but I suspect that number is in the triple digits—and, prior to A.J., I thought I had men pretty much figured out. I thought most guys were basically just the bigger, louder, smellier version of girls. But this one has really thrown me for a loop. I just can’t get my head around his whole mess. I have so many unanswered questions about A.J., so many puzzle pieces that don’t fit, I’m at a loss as to how to proceed.
