Page 102 of Kiss Me Like I Didn't Kill You

He exhales, the sound rough, almost bitter. “I can’t kill it,” he says, and my brows knit together, not understanding what he means.

“Whatever this is between us, I’ve tried. Fuck, if I haven’t.” A humourless laugh slips out. “I’ve tried not to love you. I’ve tried to hate you, the way you deserve. And still…”

A fissure opens inside my chest.

He loves me?

He hates me.

He’s both, and I can’t tell which part of him is winning.

“Then don’t,” I find myself saying.

His gaze flicks up. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t love me.”

He lets out another empty laugh. “If only it worked that way, ma lune.” His voice softens, though the edge beneath it doesn’t fade. “I keep trying to stay away, and somehow, I always end up here. At your door. Every. Bloody. Time.”

I look down, unable to meet his eyes. “How’s your foot?” I ask, anything to shift the heaviness in the room, to breathe again.

“It’s fine,” he says, dismissing it without thought.

Then, after a beat, he adds calmly, “I think this will be the last time I see you.”

The air leaves my lungs. My fingers curl into my palms until I feel the sting of my nails biting into skin.

My head lifts. “What are you talking about?”

He meets my gaze. “I mean I’m done,” he says quietly. “I came here with a purpose, Ophelia. And I’ve already crossed too many lines for you. That ends now. It has to.”

“You’re talking in riddles,” I whisper. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

A raw look flickers across his face, gone almost before I can name it. “You don’t,” he says. “But you will. Soon.”

My heart knocks painfully against my ribs. “Arlo—”

“The reason I came here,” he cuts in, “I forgot it. You made me forget. The lines blurred, and I can’t let that happen again. It ends here.”

His hand lifts, brushing my cheek. His thumb catches a tear I hadn’t realised had fallen. The gentleness of it undoes me.

I think he’s breaking up with me, though we were never truly together, never in the way I’d hoped we could be.

I tell myself I do not care. I repeat the words in my head like a mantra.

I am too bloody foolish.

How could I do this to myself? He made it perfectly clear from the start that he hated me, yet somehow I still managed to fall for him.

Whatever these feelings are, they shouldn’t exist.

He’s made it clear that what we had was nothing more than a way to scratch an itch, that nothing real could ever come of it.

And still, I didn’t believe him, that’s on me.

But I will move on.

Whatever he said about loving me doesn’t matter. Words mean nothing when there’s still that much hate behind them.