Page 41 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

“Noel,” he saying, in a way that makes me think he’s said my name several times without hearing him. My ears are roaring like waves on a shore. He lowers his head, looking into my face. “Listen to me. Please don’t make my life harder than it has to be.”

“I’m not.” My voice cracks. “I don’t.”

“Our affairs are still very much entwined. And our families—it’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand unless you were ever with someone for years. There’s so much we have to untangle.”

Talking down to me like I’m not aware of these things, even if I haven’t experienced them personally. Still putting me in a box labeled “child” in fat black marker. Still missing the fucking point entirely. I don’t say anything. I know my face is mutinous enough.

“And I’m stressed enough about everything that’s going on without you doing whatever this is. So from the bottom of my heart, please don’t.”

A wet nose touches my fingers. Amelia is here now like a homing missile of empathy, pressing herself against my legs with a whine. I run my hand over her head absently. “Okay,” I say.

Luca turns away from me and puts the chicken from the night before into the microwave. The beeps as he presses the buttons seem unnaturally loud. I almost flinch. “Do you want some of this?” he asks as he opens one cupboard, retrieving a plate for himself. “You should really eat something.”

The question hardly registers. “It’s just that,” I push because I can’t keep in it anymore, “you seem ashamed of me. You did the same thing around Killian.”

The plate clatters to the countertop with a crash and this time I do flinch.

Me and the dog both, and as I take a step backward Amelia vanishes from my side.

Luca rounds on me and he’s really angry now.

I don’t even know what I said or did until he speaks, his voice trembling with the intensity of his fury: “You are being delusional , Noel.”

I recoil like I’ve been slapped. Maybe I even gasp. I grab the collar of my shirt and pull it up over my mouth so he can’t see the way that my mouth, in the ugliest way, works and contorts and deforms against the urge to burst into tears. I hold it there and feel like I’m suffocating.

And I guess he’s realized what he’s said, trying to back track. He reaches for me. “No, Noel, I’m sorry. I’m fucking sorry. I didn’t mean that, I was just—don’t?—”

I ball the shirt’s collar in my fist, backing away from him. “I hate you.” Then, louder, tearing the fabric away from my face, “I hate you. I fucking hate you, Luca.”

I turn. I go to my room and slam the door.

Once, twice, once more, yes, just opening it and slamming it back shut like a fucking deranged child but it feels good, and I do hate him, I do, I hate him s o fucking much .

I was confused before; I am not in love with him.

I was never nothing for him except this seething burning sickening feeling that is nothing but all-consuming hatred, and the desire to peel my flesh away.

With a final slam I scream the words one more time—“ I FUCKING HATE YOU!” —before I lock it, not that I think he will try to get in because he hates me too, just as much if not more.

My phone goes off and I hurl it against the wall, and I think I might still be screaming but I don’t know because I’ve clapped my hands over my ears and all I can hear is my blood beating through my veins like a tide, a tidal wave, a tsunami.

My throat is raw and my face is burning and I’m crying now, hideously, but it’s fine because there’s no one to see it and no one to give a shit.

You’re okay, you’re safe, this will pass —I’m not, I’m not, it won’t. I’m none of these things. It never ever passes. It never ends. It never fucking ends, oh, god, it fucking hurts.

And I’m biting myself in my favorite spot and it’s not helping, it’s not alleviating.

I’m still weeping. I still hate him. He still hates me.

The way everyone does. I am insane, I am crazy, I am delusional.

I imagined everything, saw something that wasn’t real.

Because there’s not a soul on this planet who has ever loved me or could ever love me, it’s true.

Jordan was right. I am impossible to love. I am defective.

I’ve made it to the floor. My mouth tastes metallic and my arm is bleeding through my shirt and someone’s talking, but it’s not me.

I have gone silent but for the sobbing. My leg and hip throb but I can’t quite remember why anymore.

My tear-stricken cheek is pressed to the rug.

There is a small dent in my wall above where my phone lies.

“Noel.” It’s Luca. He’s the one talking. “Please let me in.”

I rub my wet face against the rug and say nothing. I don’t want him in here. I don’t want his platitudes and placations. I don’t want him to tell me the things I want to hear. They won’t be true, anyway.

“At least say something so I know you’re okay.”

“Something.” My throat is raw so it comes out raspy.

I hear him laugh a little. “Better than nothing, I guess.” He’s quiet for a moment before he says, “Come to the door.”

“No.”

“You don’t have to open it. Just sit with me.”

“That’s stupid.”

But I crawl over, anyway, on all fours like an animal or a child or a particularly pathetic adult, until I slump heavily against the door. It judders against my back as he does the same. I listen to him arrange himself on the other side, his shirt rustling. I think I can hear him breathing.

We sit there in silence on the opposite sides of the door.

I don’t have anything left to say. I am spent, exhausted, running on empty as I wipe the tears from my face with my sleeve.

My face feels like an ugly, bloated thing, a boulder too heavy for my neck.

I think I know what Luca’s going to say—that he can’t keep doing this, that he’s going to have to leave—and I want to tell him if he does I will kill myself but I don’t have the energy for that whole dog and pony show.

I don’t even have the energy to feel suicidal.

There’s just the emptiness, the gaping-sucking hole. I wish I could disappear into it.

“Are you alright?” he asks me quietly.

What a stupid question. “No.”

“Did you...” He trails off. “Did you hurt yourself?”

I have fuck all to lose by being honest now. “Yes.”

He sucks in his breath. “Fuck. I knew it. I knew that’s what you’ve been doing.”

“Who cares?”

“I do.”

Because it’s an old, drafty apartment, and the doors all hang wrong in their frames now, I see his fingers slide beneath the large gap. I stare at them like they are a spider, like they might kill me.

I know the truth now. We aren’t real and I am not his.

But I don’t actually hate him. I love him so much my chest constricts.

It’s hard to breathe and I might start crying again.

I’ve never wanted anyone so badly in my life, wanted them to reciprocate.

Easy to say, maybe, when you’re me and no one has ever given a fuck about you, but it’s true.

My heart is fucking breaking because he’s going to disappear, and there’s nothing I can do but slip my hand beneath the door as well.

My fingers brush against his and he interlaces them. I’m going to die.

“Noel.” I wish he’d stop saying my name like that, all soft and sweet like I mean anything to him. He takes a deep breath. “I didn’t mean that. What I said. I?—”

My phone goes off. It’s not the normal messenger tone, though.

It’s the special one I set, the one I’m not supposed to ignore.

I get up and pad across the room to pick it up, and thank god it’s survived yet more abuse intact.

My heart lodges itself in my throat when I see just how many messages I’ve missed over the last fifteen minutes, mounting in their fury.

“Oh, fuck,” I say.

“What?” Luca tries the door again. “Noel, what’s wrong?”

I grab my sheepskin coat and pull it on.

Almost grab a pair of jeans and then remember, right, I have a tattoo now, a fresh new angry tattoo that won’t appreciate denim scraping against it, so I tighten the drawstring on my black sweats and knot it.

I grab a pair of socks out of my drawer before I open my bedroom door at last and Luca is there, standing right in my fucking way.

He reaches for me and I sidestep him. “Move,” I order him.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.” I pull on my socks and slide around him. The train will take too long and I can’t afford to make her wait another hour. I’ll need a cab, Uber, fucking whatever. My numb fingers fumble my phone and I nearly drop it again. Fuck. Fuck!

“Noel.” Luca touches my arm and I nearly scream at him, again. I whirl to face him and he sets his hands on my shoulders, looking urgently into my face. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

Like he told me what was going on, about his wife or anything else in his life? What the fuck has he ever shared with me? Why should I tell him a single thing about my own family? These things nearly roll off my tongue but I don’t have time for this shit.

“I need a ride,” I tell him.