Hell on Heels(40)

“I—”

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m not going to forgive you just so you can feel better about yourself.”

Somehow as I spoke, I didn’t realize I was taking steps towards him.

“Do you know what it’s like on the days I forget to forget you?”

He didn’t answer.

“Do you?” I screamed, and saw his eyes close.

“No,” he said.

I leaned into his space. “It’s f*cking horrible. It’s like being awake while someone cuts your heart from your chest.”

Forgetting was both a blessing and a curse. It knifed you when you were least expecting it.

“Charlie.” His hands settled on my hips, but I was too far-gone to notice.

“I thought I was looking for you in all the men I’d dated—”

He interrupted me, “Baby, don’t.”

“I am not your baby, Dean Porter. I am not your f*cking baby.” My heart broke as I yelled at him. “I was wrong. I’d been so f*cking wrong. I wasn’t trying to find you in them. I was trying to find me.” I cried black tears. “I was trying to find the part of me that died that year.”

“Please,” he begged me to stop, but I was a runaway train and there was no slowing down.

“That’s why it never works, you know. That’s why sometimes I’m so lonely at night that I have to talk to my dead brother just to feel whole again!” I was wailing now. “I’ve spent nearly a decade chasing men who will never love me back, because I forgot how to love myself. That year broke me.”

He tried to pull my body against his chest, but I pressed my palms into his middle.

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he pleaded with me for understanding. “I loved you. I still love you. I’ve always loved you, Charlie.”

My tears came harder as I took that like a knife to the throat.

“No.” I shook my head. “You don’t just get to say that and make the last ten years go away.”

He pulled me tighter and my arms became trapped between us. “Please forgive me.”

“Show me that your heart riots!” I screamed at the wall of his chest. “Show me that you’ll bleed for something. Show me that you’ll fight like hell for once in your goddamn life.” My head was pounding and it felt foggy from the whiskey. “Show me that I matter. Show me any of that, and maybe I’ll forgive you.”

He looked down at me, fire in his eyes. “I’d do anything for you, Charlie.”

I glared at him like a sinner to a sin. “Then f*cking do it before I remember to forget you again!”

His lips came down on mine, hard.

I fought his lips with mine and pushed at his chest with my pinned hands.

He was relentless.

Lips touching. Tongue tasting. Breath hot.

My fight engaged and I poured my pain into him.

I made him feel my agony.

We kissed like enemies before a ceasefire.

I pushed at his jacket and he pulled at mine.

Kissing Dean Porter was like coming up for air after you’d been drowning. I was hopeless to stop it.

We fell together like old memories.

Long-lost lovers with too much to say and no words in which to say them.

His shirt. My sweater.

Our jeans.

It was effortless in the way you just knew the beat of your favourite song.

He took me in a way that both broke me and healed me until we lay sweaty and breathless on my hardwood floor.

I forgot sometimes. For a very brief moment in time, I would forget. I would forget I was broken. I was awarded a proverbial hall pass from my suffering. Then a shadow I wouldn’t recognize would come to pass behind me and I’d remember that not a single soul on Earth could fill the holes in my heart but me.

Sanctity was mine to choose, but wasn’t that the nature of things? Happiness was simply a choice, yet it was one I’d forgotten how to make.

“Charlie.” Dean kissed the bare skin of my back.

“Don’t.” I sat up, reaching for my sweater. “Only my family calls me that, and you lost that privilege years ago.”

My mind was catching up with me and I suddenly felt dirty.

“This was…”

Pulling my sweater over my head, I found my thong and shimmied it up my legs. “This was a mistake. You have to go.”

I stood and tried to avoid the way he sat naked on my floor like he belonged there.

“Are you serious?” The anger in his voice returned.

Picking up his clothes, one-by-one, I started throwing them at him. “Yes. Get out.”

Panic was crawling up my throat and I couldn’t look at him.

“You don’t forgive me.” He stood, stepping into his jeans.

I shook my head. “No.”

“This wasn’t a mistake,” he growled, and I swung around to face him.

“You don’t get it, do you?” I snapped. “You caught it by the handle, Dean, but I caught it by the blade.”

He slid his plaid up his arms. “I’ll still be here, Charlie. Like it or not, Monday to Friday for the next four months, you’ll see me every day.”

I threw his wallet at his chest.

“You find a way to deal with this, and when you do, I’ll still be there.” He shoved the leather into his back pocket and shoved his feet in his boots. “Whenever you get done hurting me back, I’ll still be here.”