Five of Hearts

Chapter 34

Someone moved around my room and woke me from my sleep. The figure, I could barely see in the dim moonlight shining in from my window, walked around the other side of the bed. They slipped off their shirt and pants before crawling in beside me under the covers.

"Thane?" I asked, groggily.

He didn't answer but I knew it had to be him. The smell of blood and sweat mixed with the soft hint of sugared lemon I'd grown used to reached my nose. I felt his long, warm arms wrap around me from behind, pull me to his body, and squeeze me tight. A sigh escaped my lips and I let him hold me, enjoying the heat against my back. After a few minutes I felt something warm and wet fall on my ear.

"Thane?" I tried to turn to look at him but held me harder, refusing to let me turn around. "Are you okay?"

He simply grunted softly in response and held me tighter. I could feel his body shaking against my back as I tried desperately to turn around and face him.

"Thane, let me see you," I whispered.

"No," he said finally. His voice was deep and raspy and quivering. "I don't deserve your attention. I don't deserve your blue eyes on my face or your hands on my skin. I don't deserve to have you in my arms, but I can't help it. I'm selfish, I'm obsessed, I can't get enough of you, and I never want to stop having you. You're everything that could ever be good about me."

I didn't know how to respond, I just laid there in his arms, my lips slightly parted and tears began to sting my eyes. You deserve so much.

"The first time I touched you, when you fell into my arms, I knew I held the most precious thing in the world," he continued, his words carrying so much pain. I grabbed onto his hands but he flinched, moving them away. I glanced down in the darkness and barely made out his bloody and injured knuckles.

"Thane..."

"No, even before then," Thane kept going and ignored me. "The first time I ever even saw you. When you walked into the coffee shop. You had the day off and you sat at a table studying. So serious and stressed and beautiful and intriguing. I decided not to leave like I'd planned; I stayed. Just for one more cup of coffee. Enough to watch you and try to work up the courage to talk to you. But it wasn't until the first time I held you I knew what I wanted most. What I'd kill for. What I'd die for."

I tried again to turn around and face him but he held me still, squeezing so hard it nearly took my breath.

"Thane, let me look at you," I whispered.

"I killed him," Thane whispered back, ignoring me again.

I stilled in his arms.

"Ronnie. I killed him," he explained, though he didn't need to. I knew exactly who he was talking about. I couldn't stop the shudder that ran through me. "He was a piece of shit. Over a month and half late on his payment, which we'd already given him grace on. Truthfully, he was six months late. He was messed up on meth and coke and who knows what else. His priorities were just fucked up. If you can't pay..."

"It's not your fault Thane," I said sternly.

Then Thane flipped me over roughly to face him, tears glistening in his eyes. I gasped when I saw him, dark circles under his frantic eyes, a drop of dried blood on his forehead, disheveled hair falling in his face. I wanted to hold him and comfort him but he held me in place.

"It is. I did this to myself. I chose this. I'm here," he spoke quickly and desperately. "Fuck! I feel like I'm barely hanging on. I'm b-barely hanging onto my fucking humanity."

I wrenched my arms free with some struggle and wrapped him in them. I held on as tight as I could so he couldn't pull away. He didn't even try. He just buried his face in my neck, his breath tickling my skin and held me just as tight as I held him.