Page 41 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

One last push and the dam inside of me falls.

It shatters, exploding into small pieces and leaving no chance for rebuilding.

“Me!” I yell, the sound echoing in my chest. I barely recognize my own voice. I grab the sides of her head, caging her between my palms as my fingers tangle into the hair at the back of her neck. “Me, you stubborn fucking girl. I’m protecting you from me.”

She gasps, mouth falling open and eyes wide.

“I crave you,” I exhale, the admission slicing my throat on its way out. “My body wants you every second of the day and twice as much at night. I want you in the most unhinged ways, ways that would scare you.”

My forehead drops against hers, and my eyes close as her breath fans across my face. The exhaustion in my mind takes over, all of the ways she makes me weak coming to light in this dim hallway.

I make her crazy? What do you call this?

I’m falling apart, the hinges of my identity are broken, and I have no fucking idea of who I am anymore. I don’t know how to be someone that cares about someone else. I don’t know how to be anything but what my father made me.

“I was touch starved, and now you’ve fed me.” I tighten my grip on her hair, our noses rubbing against one another. “Of course I’m fucking hungry for you.”

The shock has worn off enough that I can feel her hands seeking my skin, fingers splayed across my cheeks as she holds me.

“Then take me. Have me, Thatcher. Let me give myself to you.”

I bite down on my bottom lip, tilting my head slightly, my eyebrows furrowed in mental anguish.

“I can’t,” I groan. “I can’t let you do that.”

It’s the only thing I want.

It keeps me up at night. The way I yearn for her haunts me.

Fuck, I want to own her in all the ways that I can, but I just—

“Why?”

It’s so gentle, so Lyra, that I can barely take hearing another word from her mouth. I lift my head from hers, rubbing my thumb across her tearstained cheeks.

I look at her eyes, needing her to see this, needing her to hear what I’m saying so that she understands.

“I’m incapable of giving you what you want.” My throat is raw. “A relationship? A man who loves you? I can never be that. You will always require more from me, and there is nothing more I can give. I’m uncaring and cold. Love doesn’t live in my world. I’m a killer, darling. That’s all I will ever be.”

Vulnerability.

It makes me want to squirm out of my skin.

I’ve unlocked this place in my mind, and these words that have come out because of that feel like they’ve waited for eternities to be spoken out loud. Nothing will be the same after this; no matter how tragically we end, I will never be the same.

There will forever be a piece of me that is open, carved in the shape of her body.

“You don’t need to protect me, not even from you.” She holds me tighter, as if her touch will make the words soak into my skin. “I’ll take what you can give me, don’t you see that? I would rather have you like this than live without you. There is no one else out there for me. I was made for you.”

Physical pain shreds through me. It hurts in a way I can never explain, in a way that I’ve give anything to forget.

I pull my hands back, wrapping them around her wrists to push her hands back towards her chest, away from my face.

“Please, Thatcher,” she whispers, her lips glistening with tears. “Your sharp edges don’t hurt me.”

Taking a step back from her space feels like walking into the cold, further and further from the warmth that keeps us alive.

I walk to my room, pausing in the doorway.