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Daniel wasn’t domineering, jealous, nor possessive. None of the unhealthy things I occasionally craved but didn’t need. He was ambitious, funny, smart, and generous with me. I should’ve loved him.
He kissed me sweetly. He always kissed me sweetly, and I always pulled away first.
To hell with my mind, it was my body that would never forget him.
Privacy was the last thing we needed. Cole and I needed to be supervised at all times.
The truth was, if it wasn’t Daniel getting the scraps of me, it would’ve been someone else, because my heart wasn’t whole. I’d left the other half of it back in Seattle, and now it was here, right in front of me, staring into me as if nothing could keep us apart. Not even my vows.
he had a right to ask for more. But I’d given him all I could give, because the rest of me belonged to someone else. And I couldn’t make the belonging stop no matter how hard I tried.
A boy who got two thousand signatures on a petition to name a fountain in the park after my mother.
Daniel relented, following my lead, and therein resided the problem. I needed him to take, to make me pay for whatever he could come up with, even if the transgression had to be imagined. I needed to choke on my breaths, and die a thousand deaths in his arms, at his hands. I needed to lose control, to have it stolen from me. I needed to be robbed of free will.
I was a ball of repression, of pent-up aggression, and he was pleasant, a tranquil sea, when what I needed was a fucking tornado to come through and rip everything down to its foundation, including me.
“So he thinks you’re fucking me, and in turn he almost fucked his husband? You do realize how absurd and twisted you two are, right?”
He loved me, and I could see his potential to be a better man. I could almost touch it. And I understood what drove him. And some days I did love him. It was usually the days when I could find the strength to love myself. Those days didn’t come by often and were fleeting when they did. Truthfully, Daniel was the protective shield standing between Cole and me.
“When Daniel makes love to me,” I started, and his face contorted in pain, “he doesn’t ask for anything, and I give him less than nothing, because I have nothing to give. It’s all with you.
“You’ve never been touched the way you touch me. You’d never understand.” “And you’ve never been loved the way you loved me, not even by me. No one is capable of the kind of love you give. So you wouldn’t understand how impossible it would be for me to move on. Or to give anyone even a fraction of what I gave you,” he promised.
“I can’t compete with your pain, angel. Your wounds are too deep for my love to reach. Too deep for my love to heal. You have to find a way past it. But something’s gotta give because I can’t do this, and I know, right now, that something won’t be you.”
“I bet she feels closer, doesn’t she? With you constantly reminding yourself of the pain, sharpening it so it never dulls…it keeps her near,”
“I know we’re not supposed to dwell on the past—” “Then don’t,” Cole said. “We can talk about it. We can reminisce. But we don’t dwell there. We don’t live there. Here is where we live.”
