Lovestruck || borusara

XXIII.

'Still feeling sick. I don't think I'll be able to make it into the office again today.' Sarada typed the lie into a text message to Suigetsu and hit send. Then with a tired sigh, she dropped her phone onto the bed and reburied her face into her tear-soaked pillow.

It was a completely pitiful scene and yet Sarada just couldn't muster up the strength to pretend she was okay. Her chest physically ached as the memories of Boruto yelling at her in her office replayed in her mind, only worsened by the tiny voice that whispered that she deserved it.

She deserved every nasty thing he said.

Dark eyes clenched shut as a fresh wave of tears threatened to fall. Did she really have any right to feel sad?

She knew how badly those words would hurt him and she wrote them anyway. Why couldn't she just let go of that stupid article idea after she realized Boruto wasn't like that at all?!

Why did she let any of this happen?!

Sarada tortured herself with a million distressing questions as she thought through the last several weeks spent with Boruto desperately resisting how she felt about him and for what?

Was it just some inflated sense of self-importance?! She was convinced her first snap judgment of a man, based on worthless tabloids, was correct even when presented with evidence to the contrary?! Why did she want to cling to an idea she knew was so wrong!?

Was it really so hard to believe Boruto actually had feelings for her?

In her many self-interrogations that followed her fallout with Boruto, that was the question that never failed to elicit a choked sob from her lips. Because when she began to boil down why she couldn't trust him and the feelings he so clearly expressed, the following questions dug into the deep corners of her heart that she wasn't sure she was ready to unearth.

"The truth is just because someone says they love you doesn't mean they'll stay."

It was a fearful sentiment she expressed to Boruto when confiding in him about her parental baggage, but now it seemed more like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And however self-serving it may have been on her part, Tsubaki reiterated that fear when she warned Sarada that he wasn't the kind of guy who sticks around. With that in the back of her mind, of course, she had her doubts!

So even when Boruto consistently showed he was invested in their relationship beyond sex, she didn't want to believe it.

Because what if she let herself believe it and then he actually did leave?!

Wouldn't she feel just as stupid?!

The vulnerability of real intimacy scared the fuck out of her. So she guarded her heart from someone who might actually stick around over the fear of a million what-ifs. Sarada held on to that scathing article idea like a self-destruct button and justified it in her mind by telling herself this was the only way to transfer to her dream job.

She didn't really want to write it, but destroying her relationship with Boruto before he could ever leave would be better, right?

Right?!

That line of thinking had Sarada spiraling again for the nth time in forty-eight hours. Her usual method of distraction was burying herself in her work, but that felt impossible to do, especially when the work she really needed to get done was her article about Boruto.

She knew she needed to write a completely new cover story, but her laptop was in the living room and her body just felt too heavy to move.

What would even be the point? She had no clue what she would even write anyway. Sarada hugged her pillows tighter against her aching chest as a rush of emotions washed over her. She felt like such a colossal disappointment. She was given this opportunity to shine, prove herself to her boss, her colleagues, her parents, and even the editor-in-chief of The Konoha Times!