Wicked in Love

Chapter 21 - you

Kara

"Kara."

I opened my eyes. Cameron was standing in front of me.

In his black tuxedo, he looked viciously beautiful. I always thought his face belonged to an archangel. Under the moonlight, that had never been truer. But it had always been his eyes that gripped me.

So many times, I had seen his blue eyes darken with emotions—happiness, anger, passion, pleasure, fear, affection. And I thought I had also seen love. I had seen them go flat and blank when he hid himself from me.

And beneath all that, they were always hauntingly sad.

I want to know what memories were playing in his head to fill his eyes with sorrow.

I want to know why he stopped wanting to tell me.

I want to know why, even after all this time, I still couldn't erase all these feelings I have for him.

I shut my eyes closed and, in my head, I heard the words he'd said to me from a long time ago.

Will you come home with me?

But that was another time, another place. We were different now. Or so I kept telling myself and hoping that would somehow make what I felt for him disappear.

"What are you doing?" I choked out.

He stepped forward.

"Stop," I whispered brokenly. "Stop!"

He stilled, a look of intense pain crossing his features.

"Why did you come here?" I demanded.

"I heard about the fire." The look in his eyes was imploring me to let him come closer. He lifted his hand as if to touch my face, but the glare I shot at him stopped him. He lowered his arm to his side.

"Are you alright," he asked gently, "Kara?"

When a painful sound came out of my throat, I covered my mouth with the back of my hand, pressing so hard that it hurt. The wall I had built around me was easily crumbling from his words. Maybe it was the way he'd asked them. Desperately.

My eyes stung with unshed tears, and his presence was making it impossible to hold them back. There was a hurricane of emotions swirling in my chest—it felt tight, like it was about to explode.

"Tell me," he pleaded. "Are you hurt?"

I couldn't deny the anguish in his voice. I shook my head no.

I hated the hitch in my heart when I saw the unmistakable fear and madness in his eyes, that he thought something bad had happened to me. Because it told me that he cared. I hated it.

I was scared of the relief that wrapped around my heavy heart at the sight of him, as though he was my bedrock and I could let my pain go because he was my safety and protection.

But he wasn't, was he?

He couldn't be. He left me. And yet why? Where were these feelings coming from? I couldn't understand any of it. I wanted him to leave and yet I was terrified that he would.

"And your dad? Dylan?"

Hearing the sincere concern and fear in his voice broke down the rest of my walls. I thought that I could turn him away, I thought I could hold out against him—until he asked about my family.

"What are you doing?" I repeated. Tears fell on my cheeks. I couldn't hold them back any longer. "How am I supposed to stay strong when you show up like this? Why did you have to come here and destroy me? How am I supposed to... to stop..."