To Love a Monster

|| Chapter Twenty-Four ||

He brought his fingers to my chin. “I don’t enjoy hurting you, Red. I – I never did.”

“Then why would you say that?” I mumbled, feeling the amount of hate I conjured to feel towards him was dissipating by the second.

He removed his hands and took a few steps back. “I’m trying to make you hate me.”

I gulped nervously. “Why?” Hating him was harder than possible. I mean, if he was far away then I found it possible to attempt to hate him. On the other hand seeing him always managed to strengthen my attraction.

He shook his head and turned towards the window. “I – It would be easier.”

I frowned. “Easier for what?”

I could see his back muscles tense as the question left my lips. “Doesn’t matter,” he whispered more to himself than to anyone else. This only managed to spike my curiosity. I wanted to know so much more about him, about his childhood, about his views on things and, most importantly, about why he hated the world so much. However, none of this was going to happen with him always pushing me away.

“Daniel,” I said. Taking a few cautious steps, I made my way towards him and rested my elbows against the window sill. If he minded me standing next to him, he didn’t seem to show it. He continued to stare out the window with a thoughtful look contorting his face. “Tell me.”

He turned to face me. “Tell you what?”

I bit my lip and then took a deep breath. “What are thinking about?”

He shrugged but didn’t reply. Damn it.

I decided to take a different approach to having a conversation with him.

“You know, I told Kayla about you.”

He frowned. “Who the fuck is that?”

I smiled. “She’s…a friend?” After recent events and calculations, Kayla would barely be seen as a friend but what else was I supposed to say?

“Okay.” That was all he said. His attention span was worse than mine.

We stayed like this for a while, hugged by silence. Whether it was comfortable or not was still questionable. It wasn’t until Daniel pushed himself off of the sill that my eyes were able to become distracted by something other than the lonely looking tree on the other side of the street.

I watched as Daniel reached through his pockets and pulled something out. It was red but I couldn’t make out – my eyes widened.

He scratched the back of his neck. “I – uh, got you this. It kinda got ruined but uh, yeah.” He held out a red rose in his hand, and even though some of the petals had fallen off and the flower itself looked like it had been crushed, I felt like the happiest girl in the world. I could barely distinguish my dreams from reality anymore and I’m just hoping this is reality and not one of my stupid daydreams.

Just to make sure, I reached out and took the stem of the flower from him with a grand smile on my face. “Thank you,” I told him, allowing a small giggle to follow.      

He shrugged. “I was in the woods and I saw it,” he said, referring to the flower. “It reminded me of you.”

The blush that had started to form on my cheeks had stretched to my whole face. I took a deep breath to try and calm down. “Daniel, it’s gorgeous.” I evaluated the rose.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “It was even more gorgeous before I touched it.”

I diverted my attention from the flower in my hand to him as his words registered in my mind. Though, for some reason, I knew he wasn’t talking about the flower and the look he returned only managed to confirm that. He looked sad – and not the kind that is about to burst out crying. He looked like an abandoned child who was wondering why everyone left him which was, more or less, what led me to walk over to him and wrap my arms around his neck.