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word count: 944 warnings: none
SNEAKING BACK INTO THE HOUSE after we smoked was harder than sneaking out. The kitchen door creaked as Eloise pushed it open in front of me and beckoned me to follow her. It was very dark in the kitchen, and being the klutz that I am, I tripped on air and slammed my knee into the counter.
"Fuc-," a jolt of pain shot up my leg and I started to swear but Eloise smacked her hand over my mouth and pointed to the hallway that led to the servants quarters, where light flickered on.
El grabbed my wrist, dragged me to the other side of the room and pushed me behind a closet door. The back of my nightdress was cut just low enough that I felt a shiver run throughout my body as my back came in contact with the cool wall. Eloise quickly and quietly closed the door so it was pressed against her back and she was facing me. She checked over her shoulder before looking back at me, who was now nose to nose with her.
My eyes flitted back and forth from her eyes to her lips. A warm feeling prickled in my stomach as I watched her chest was rise and fall. With each breath, her lips would twitch slightly. I wanted to kiss her so badly, wanted to know if it would fee the way it did in my dreams, but just for a moment I saw fear glaze over her eyes. It was only a second, a tiny moment of terror but instantly I regretted thinking about kissing her.
The sensation in my stomach plummeted and was replaced by guilt. It didn't matter what Madam Delacroix thought she saw if El herself was paralyzed with fear.
Paralyzed with the fear of society. If I kissed her right now, told her how much my feelings for her were growing I would be contradicting everything she knew. I was not nor would I ever be a man.
Paralyzed with the fear of what her family would think, she was a Bridgerton after all. How would they react? Would they accept her?
Even though she had somehow snuck her way into my heart unknowingly, that did not mean she had let me into hers. Even though I desperately wanted to be let in.
I had felt so numb for years. Sometimes feeling a flutter of happiness when Simon would crack a joke or we would have chocolate cake for dessert, but the feeling was fleeting. So fleeting that I couldn't even actually describe it until I felt it. Or at least I couldn't until I met her. Around Eloise the feeling was constant. Constantly wrapping around me like a warm embrace, weaving around my bones and muscles, infecting my brain and heart.
It was addicting, like a drug and I didn't want the feeling to go away. I feared if I committed to this, gave in to the good feeling would she stay? If I broke down all my walls for her, let her know all of the insecurities and negative thoughts that circled my mind.
If I handed my heart to her willingly, would she smash it into the floor?
Would she say she loved me now, only to change her mind in a week, a month, maybe a year? That, I knew would break me. Not many people could do that, not many people knew how or where to hurt me, but she could. The stupid things that boys in my town would say made me feel nothing, simply starting the fire that ignited my smart ass retorts. The words out of their mouths didn't matter to me, I didn't care what they thought of me. If they thought I was a prude, or a whore, or an insane person, it didn't matter. But it was growing increasingly obvious to me that Eloise's opinion of me mattered. God, it mattered more than anyone else's opinion. I wanted her to spend the rest of her life with me. But I needed her to stay, as needed her to know and the look in her eyes told me she was too scared to stay.
The footsteps receded and the light disappeared, leaving us in the dark.
Eloise was still looking at me, I gently pushed the door behind her so I could breathe and she could move. She didn't though, just stared at me.
"Eloise," I breathed, begging her to move and not to do something she would regret. Stepping to the side, looking away as I walked past her, not stopping me.
Walking back up to my room, my skin tingled where she grabbed me. I pushed that feeling deep into the depths of my soul, I couldn't do this. Couldn't be some girl's experiment, her self discovery. Actually, with any other girl, I wouldn't mind but not El. She would break me, and no not in a cliche way where "she could break me because I was hers to break". If she broke me, there was no going back no fixing or undoing of mistakes. If Eloise broke me, I would be done.
wrote this in my car in a Tim Hortons parking lot, mooching off their wifi lol
