August & Colin | WRU series | book 1
We take risks. We make mistakes. We lie. We love. We hurt. We lose total control.
I took a risk. I paid the price.
I made a mistake. I felt the guilt.
I lied. I lie.
I loved. I try not to.
I hurt. I still do.
...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I stare at him. His peaceful demeanor, his chest slowly rising and falling, his mind still wandering through his dreams.
He's still here.
Even after I tried to push him away last night, clouded by fright rushing through my veins.
He's still here, embracing every part of me. Even the ugly bits and pieces, even the sharp edges that cut him. Instead of running in the opposite direction, fleeing the danger of my razor-sharp fear, he blunted it with his loving words.
I want you, Ari. Only you. Always you.
Good gracious, I don't deserve this man.
His heart is filled with tenderness and warmth, a softness that serves as my personal bubble wrap, protecting me from any harm. His heart is filled with love and I am privileged to have been granted a piece.
A piece I want to cherish forever.
Even though the fragility of it shooted panic through my blood, since I used to think of love as precarious. Something so fickle it could disappear in a split second. A fragile thread keeping two people together, yet a connection bound to break.
Stuck in the downward spiral of that belief, my words sang songs of distance, however, my body never danced on their rhythm, because my heart refused to utter lies.
I don't want to run.
Yet a worst-case scenario bomb wrapped around my heart with barbed wire, hurting me even when it doesn't go off, shrunk my heart to lessen the pain. Lessen the damage for when it inevitably would explode.
Then what are you doing now? Tell me how this is any different.
You told me you wanted to fight for us, but this isn't fighting, August, this is giving up before we even started.
I was so focused on the outcome that I didn't realize it was me who was holding the detonator in my hand.
I was the one fumbling with the switch that would shatter my heart.
I was the one pushing him away.
I was the one breaking us apart because I was afraid of the risk that something else would make the bomb around my heart explode.
I made myself the villain because it's easier to blame myself than to blame something I have no power over.
Perhaps you think you're not good enough to be loved regardless of the difficulties, pain, and struggles.
His words had cut deep, not only because they hold the truth, but of the way he spat them out in anger. His agitated tone sliced right through me and whilst the confrontation hurt, I needed the realization it brought me.
Because I've realized his words lay at the root of my avoidant behavior.
Why I run and hide from my emotions. Why I walked away three years ago when things got complicated and the situation got tangled up in risks.
