[18+ ONGOING]
Josephine Devereaux has spent her entire life wishing she liked change & spontaneity. But when she gets accepted into Southern Chicago U's forensics program, change suddenly isn't so scary. Fast forward two years- she's a junior at the...
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If you told me about an hour ago that I would willingly be letting Beckett Daniels wrap his arm around me, and that he wasn't doing it for emergency medical reasons or something along those lines, I would've said you were full of shit.
But as his lips grace the top of my head, I find myself not really wanting to leave his arms.
It's difficult to resist the urge to snap my neck up in surprise at the brief display of affection, but I somehow do it.
Probably because I know that by letting the panicked side of me win, I would most likely unravel all the progress we had made tonight. I'm not willing to delve into the murky water that holds the answer for all my questions.
Why did you just kiss my head?
Why are you not mad at me?
Why do you like when I am less guarded?
Will we just go back to irritable lab partners after tonight?
But I don't ask them.
Instead I do something that I've never done in my twenty-one years of living:
not run from what makes me feel.
"I can feel you panicking internally." Beck says quietly, his voice snapping me out of my thoughts.
"I'm not," I lie, knowing that he had always been able to see right through me and that it was pointless to try.
Beck lifts an eyebrow as he stares down at me skeptically, waiting for me to fess up.
"Maybe a little." I admit, stepping out of his hold and looking at the ground.
"Don't. I'd rather not do the whole one step forward, five steps back thing with you Josie. We've been doing it for over two years now." Beck says earnestly.
I look back up at his stoic expression, internally wincing at the remark.
I know he didn't mean anything by it, but I couldn't help but feel guilt stab me in the gut, reflecting on how many times in the past I'd pushed him away.
Beck never wanted to cross any boundaries with me. He always respected my space and knew when to shut the fuck up if I seemed annoyed, even if it wasn't directed at him. He never reacted impulsively to times when I did and couldn't just bite my tongue, and he never chased after me when I'd leave him in the dust the second he said something that made my stomach turn. But it never made him stop doing said things. He never stopped saying nice things every once in a while, he never stopped holding my coat up to help me get it on, he never stopped helping me during labs no matter how dictatorial I was, and he never expressed frustration when I was overflowing with it.
Each reflection was like another little stab to my heart, as I found myself delving into murky waters, but not the ones I feared earlier. Instead, they were the ones that consisted of extensive self-reflection and betterment. Overflowing waves of coping mechanisms, deflection methods, and misdirected hurt that I spent years drowning him in.
