No Strings Attached

Chapter Seventeen

His chest expanded on an inhalation as his eyes widened, moving quickly across her to see the truth in her own.

“I couldn’t breathe ... knowing he was out there and you were in so much pain ... it was killing me. I had to. And I know, maybe you don’t agree with what I did, or how I did it, but ... fuck, Shan, the things I wanted to do – I didn’t have a choice, I was going mad with it.”

“But why now? It’s been months ...”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, sighing heavily, “I think it’s because I’ve only just realised how much pain you’ve been in since it happened – how much it affected you. Jay let slip that you’ve been seeing that Doctor over in Manchester, and I could see how much you were tormenting yourself – even more so than  ... before. I can’t stand to see you in pain like that, I can’t even breathe for thinking about it. And all that just ... it builds up, you know. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so fucking brutal if he hadn’t have been in the middle of a fuck-fest, maybe if I’d have found him, I don’t know, washing dishes, or something, I could’ve reeled it in. But what he did, and the affect that it had for you, and to find him in a room of near enough a dozen fuck buddies, it just made it worse.”

She knew he was right, somehow that one incident had thrown her back into fears and doubts that her father had planted in her mind when she was too young and naive to block them out.

She’d become a victim all over again, and it was difficult not to see herself as the catalyst when it was repeated. And to him – Walters – it meant nothing.

“I won’t apologise for it, but I meant what I said – I’d give anything to take those memories away from you.”

“Do you remember the first time we ever started ... experimenting? Up at the lake that night?”

“What do you think?” he smirked, lifting one eyebrow sardonically.

“Do you remember what you said to me afterwards? About needing to see everything – every side of me?” He nodded, his brows dropping low into a thoughtful frown, “Well, that’s how I feel for you. I won’t – I can’t – say that I’m not disturbed by it, that I’m not concerned that you could have been hurt,” he snorted in disbelief at that, but she continued regardless, “You could have – or you could have been caught, or anything, I guess. My moral compass is going off the metre at what I’m saying here, but I’m also sort of ... in awe of the fact that you would do something like that for me, in some dark, and morbid corner of me. Does that make any sense?”

“Yeah, I think it does,” he said slowly, stroking her hair quietly, as though she was a small child in need of comfort.

She could see the burning need in his eyes for the words – those three words that would compound everything that she was trying to say to him, but somehow she wasn’t ready to give herself over to him in that way. As much as she loved him – and she did, of course she did; with a dark and twisted kind of obsession – she couldn’t give him the words – not yet. She still had to keep a part of herself back, despite his promises of forever – she’d had them before after all, she’d had the words, the vows, and still she’d felt her heart shatter into a million pieces.