The Pull

Chapter 26

It was so strange. I had never experienced this kind of feelings being this raw. I didn't know they could be. I was numb, shut off, like I was looking at myself from outside of me. Ben searched my eyes for the shortest of moments.

"What are you thinking, Puck?" He had to be kidding. I was not telling him how much this hurt.

"I don't know. Yeah. You're probably right. We should stop." I sounded sincere enough. I sounded like I wasn't falling apart at all. I could feel my face lacking expression. Everything had sort of shut down.

Oh my god. I think I might be broken this time. 

"It'll be better this way," he continued like anything he said now would make a difference. "We can make it work, being colleagues. I am still your friend. I still care about you, Puck."

"I know. Of course, we'll make it work. It'll be fine." I looked at my hands. They were still my hands, but it felt like they belonged to someone else. "I am really tired, Ben, so I am going to get a taxi and head back to the hotel. We can talk more tomorrow, or we don't. I mean, I get it. You don't have to explain. I agree with you." I wondered who she was, that woman talking. It couldn't be me because I couldn't feel my lips moving. My brain was quiet.

I left him there. Looked at him with eyes void of emotion, gave him a light kiss on the cheek and then I left him there. I walked calmly to the reception and asked them to call me a taxi. I waited in the cool air outside, watching the very out of place palm trees swaying in the wind. Calm. I realised my movements were a bit slow, but I couldn't say why. In the taxi I wondered why I felt so shut down. And I couldn't cry. It would probably be a healthy release, but I couldn't. All I could feel was this ache in my chest. Like pressure from the inside. I longed for those familiar tears, I wanted it for its healing power, and it scared me that I was feeling so numb.

What just happened? This morning, he told me he didn't care what anyone thought and that he wouldn't pretend. That what happened between us was as real to him as it was to me. And now we were over because the firm would possibly object if they knew? It made no sense at all. Did he not understand how this would hurt me? I sighed. Probably not. Not even I had comprehended what him rejecting me would do to me. I was so used to the filters I always had on my emotions. I felt love. I knew all about passion and pain. But one fateful night I witnessed my mother's murder and I had since then put a veil on my ability to be vulnerable with other people. It was like I could, but always with one foot out the door. A little guarded, a little distanced. I felt it all, but only by holding other people off by an arm's length while doing it. Not with Ben. He had come into my life at an extraordinary time, when I had so much going on that I missed paying attention to my feelings around him. I wanted to think it was because I let my guard down, but that was only half the truth. Ben had something I didn't have a guard for to begin with. I had nothing to put up against his effect on me, and although I had noticed it happening, I just hadn't been capable of fathoming just how deep and intense my feelings really had become. Simply because I had no experience of feelings like these. I didn't understand what I was walking in to. And now... I had no idea what to do to back out again. I didn't want to feel this way. It felt... dangerous. I was slowly crumbling, and I had nothing of the tools I needed to push through this. Emma and Ezra were on another continent. My home, where I usually had routines and methods to handle anxiety, was now a small hotel room that gave me nothing of the safety I needed. I couldn't even cook or go grocery shopping or clean out a wardrobe, those mundane chores that always provided some calm in their simplicity. I took up my phone and started googling for a yoga studio in London. My room was too small for practicing, and I realised this was pretty much the only thing I would be able to achieve out of all my usual strategies to keep my mind in check and the darkness at bay. In all of this I felt a little angry. Ben could have waited. Or he could have stopped sooner. Doing this now, when I had nothing to fall back on, it was unnecessarily cruel. Why? I just couldn't believe he had done this to hurt me on purpose. Yet he likely knew I had none of my support systems available to me here. I shook my head in the darkness of the taxi backseat. He didn't understand. It was the only reasonable explanation. He didn't know me well enough to see how incredible it all had been for me, how rare me letting him in – deliberately or not – really was. How he had created something new in me that now was falling into a million pieces. I feared for tomorrow. Usually, my game face was solid, but this made me feel so unstable. I did not trust myself to keep it together. I wanted to run. I wanted to turn away from all this and never look back. Get myself somewhere safe, where Ben would never be able to read my face, see the pain. I couldn't take it if he were to feel pity for me. I just could not handle that, but I had no way of escaping this. I was going to have to find my armour. I glanced at the time on my phone.