Choosing Us (Pierced Hearts Duet #1)
M. Robinson
Prologue
<>Aiden<>
__________
“I just don’t know who you are anymore!” she screamed out with pure hatred dripping from her voice.
In her eyes.
In her fucking soul.
Her fists slammed into my chest with a hard thud, but I barely wavered. I’d take every blow, every yell, every single goddamn thing she delivered.
Her pain.
Her sadness.
Her desire to let go and just be.
It was all clear as day, glaring right at me.
The fear in my mind grew at a rapid speed, corrupting the only vacant spaces left of my being. The unease festering inside me was far greater than anything I’d ever known or felt.
It took over as I stepped toward her, instantly blocked by an imaginary wall she had built so high, it would simply crush her the moment I tried to knock it down.
Caving us both in.
“Get away from me! Just get away from me!”
She was slipping further away from the life we fought so hard for.
Everything we wanted.
Everything we needed.
Everything we prayed for time and time again was disappearing like a thief in the night.
Willingly taking the love of my life with it.
“Bailey … please … please don’t say that. I’m begging you…” I extended my hand, but she immediately pulled away as if the words she spewed were in fact our reality.
Leaving me far behind.
I ran my hands through my disheveled hair, yearning to rip it out of my head. “Bailey, ple—”
“No! No! No! No!” she wholeheartedly repeated, placing her hands over her ears. Backing into the wall with nothing but her sobs and desperate pleas filling the small space between us.
Wrecking the fuck out of me.
“I don’t want you anywhere near me! Go away! Just go away!”
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t fucking breathe.
“Bailey, just calm down! Calm the fuck down and let me—”
“I don’t want you near me! I don’t need you! I want nothing from you but for you to leave me alone!”
“Bay, you know I can’t do that,” I strongly conveyed, trying to steady my tone. Compose myself, catch my bearings, knowing it would help bring her back to me in the end. “Beauty—”
“Stop calling me that! That’s not my name!” She reached for the first thing in sight and chucked it at me. Her rage completely taking over.
I let the glass hit my shoulder, hoping it would help her find truth through the lies.
“I don’t know you anymore! Why can’t you understand that I don’t want anything to do with you! Nothing!”
“Don’t push me, Bay. You don’t mean that. You don’t fucking mean that. Please, baby … don’t do this … don’t fucking do this to us…” I pleaded with my hands steepled out in front me.
Praying.
Surrendering.
Relinquishing defeat.
My white flag was up. My goddamn flag was raised up high, flowing adamantly through the storm.
“Just stay away from me,” she murmured so low, I could barely hear her. Narrowing her gorgeous eyes at me with an endless stream of questions splitting through her unsettled gaze. Making it difficult for her to focus solely on me.
On my voice.
On my presence.
Her.
Me.
Us.
“Aiden—”
“Please don’t leave me, Beauty. Please…”
I took an agonizing step toward her. “I.” Two more slow steps. “Love.” Another two brought me inches away from her mouth. I resisted the desire to claim her lips like I’d done hundreds, thousands, millions of times before.
A lifetime of kisses.
I love you’s.
You’re mines.
Instead, my eyes stayed fixated on her face. My core seized tighter, my knees got weaker, my body ached, remembering the reassuring symmetry of her heart beating against mine.
“You, Bailey Ashlyn Pierce. My girl, my wife, my best friend, my whole fucking heart.” Grabbing her face in between my hands, I yearned for her to feel me.
To see me.
To love me.
The man who would die for her.
It didn’t take long for our bodies to close the emotional and physical distance between us. From her mind to her heart, to every goddamn bone in her body, I knew she felt it. There was no way in hell she couldn’t sense the effect I always had on her.
The effect she’d always have on me.
“You’re all the same. Don’t you get it? You’re one of them. You’re just one of them to me, Aiden. That’s all that’s left. Don’t you see?”
I gripped onto her face. “To Hell with that, Bay. I’m your one and only. I’m your home.”
“There’s no peace for me in that house.”
“I know, you took it all with you.”
Her body trembled, her strong, hardened composure weakened with each word that escaped from her mouth. “Why do you keep hurting me?”
I grimaced as if the wind had been knocked right out of me. “I would never hurt you. Never. I’m here, Bailey.” My grip shifted toward the nook of her neck, tugging her toward me, bringing her heart against mine. “I’m right here.”