Sinners

Ch. 25 - Face To Face

Hearing those words...THAT word...escape his lips, made my heart sink. I couldn't even bring myself to yell at him, bash him, mistreat him. None of it!

All I wanted to do was hold him.

I pull my arms out from his bear hug, causing him to let go and step back. I walk him over to the chair he sat on and suggested he take a seat. He sits down, I make the decision to sit on his lap, and I pull him in for a hug. I hold him close, resting his head on my chest. He seemed very surprised that I was behaving this way, but he was embracing it with everything in him. I could tell.

"Genesis, I'm sorry. I really am. A guy like me doesn't deserve a girl like you. You're rare. You're special, and I came along and ruined your life. I'm sorry for taking part in that dumb ass bet with Zay, and for being the reason you almost died that night.." He begins to spew. The moment that he brought up my accident and took blame for it, I interrupted him immediately.

"What are you talking about Devin?? Me getting hit by that car had nothing to do with you! " I exclaim. "That was my fault! I was the one who ran into incoming traffic blindly out of my own ignorance."

*Devin sighs* "Because of me." He replies. "No! You weren't doing anything but trying to talk to me and get me to stop running away. I made the irrational decision to do what I did and that's why I got hit, despite what reasons were behind it." I drill into his head. "I was hurt Devin....I still am. Till this day, I still can't bring myself to understand why you chose me. Why me out of all people? Why couldn't you choose another girl to ruin? " I asks him relentlessly.

Devin rests his left hand on my thigh, and keeps his right arm around my waist. The calm breeze blew both of our hair out of our faces.

"Genesis...I wanted to tell you about that bet. I tried for so long, but...I couldn't bring myself to do it. The night we spent at the hotel when my mom called about my grandfather? I was going to tell you that night. That's why I couldn't sleep. That's why you heard me mumbling as you slept on my chest. I was trying to convince myself that if I told you then, I'd still have time to fix everything before it was too late. It just turns out that...after that call, I left. I never got to see you again until the night of that fuck niggas party...and that's when everything went down." He tells me, squeezing my leg.

My heart sank further into the pit of my stomach. He raises his head up from my chest to look at me, immediately noticing the tears that were forming in my eyes. "Gen don't..." I hear him begin to say, but I had something else to say myself.

"Was it...was any of it real? Was anything that I thought we had, genuine? Or was the whole thing apart of the bet? " I ask him, scared of his response so I refuse to look him in the eye. "Hell no! Genesis look at me." He exclaims, pulling my face towards his, forcing me to look him in his face. "This shit may have started as a bet, and that's when I was constantly messing with you, trying to make you nervous or make you weak at the sight of me. All of the play shit. Even then, I was starting to realize how intrigued I was by you. I was constantly trying to figure out if I should take it there with you or not. And although the point of the bet was to see who could get you first, from the very first time we had sex, I never told them...because at that point it wasn't about the bet anymore. It was about what I wanted with me and you." He made clear to me. "Understand that if I wasn't all about you, Genesis I would've never even bothered to get so involved in your life or allowed you to experience being apart of mine. Every second I spent with you felt like an escape to a new world. I cherished every moment. I fell in love with you without even really understanding what those words mean." He adds on.

Never did I think I would get an answer to the questions I feared to question out loud. Was Devin Gordon in love with me just as much as I was with him? Or was he even in love with me at all? Were our feelings for one another the same? Or was I the one falling too hard too quick?