Crazy is the Name of My Game

(18) Thank you, Greene.

Leonn Adams

I fucked up.

There was no way I could ever forget the tears that slipped through her hard exterior. I promised before that I would never intentionally hurt her, but here I was, making the same mistake all over again. There was no more room for regret in me. Only pain. That all-consuming pain I’ve carried since the moment I realized I’ve lost her.

And now, I was losing her again… all for a different reason, but still…

If I explain, would she understand? Was it too late to run after her now? I was scared she would know, that the Spirits would let her remember. I was afraid to see the disgust and accusation in her beautiful eyes once she knows the truth. That’s why I had to push her away. She couldn’t get too close to me.

All that mattered was that I could protect her. She didn’t need to know that I was a part of her life.

I had to cut her off before she becomes too attracted, too attached to me.

Pretending was my only armor against her. Now that I found her, I wasn’t strong enough to stay away so she had to do the distancing herself. The moment I laid my eyes on her, I knew I was a goner. A couple of seconds more and I would have had spilt out everything.

Heaven forbid, I tell her the truth.

It was difficult to for me to make her angry enough to hate me – how can I hurt the person I love when every inch of my body demanded to have her wrapped in my arms, to whisper how much she meant to me, to tell her I have been waiting for her all this time? ‘Course I couldn’t say that. Here, we were strangers. She knew next to nothing about me. To her, I was just that boy in the same school. I planned to keep it that way.

It took me every stinking nerve of my body to work up the courage to speak to her with that tone and that voice. I knew my words were perfectly delivered. I hurt her on purpose. I’m a fucked-up idiot, and as she stormed away, I realized that I was the biggest fucked-up idiot ever since the history of man.

“Hans,” someone said beside me. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

If pain is okay, then I’m more than okay.

“I sure hope so,” I replied dryly, never believing the words I said. “Maybe in our next lifetime. Maybe in the next millennium. Who knows, maybe not after forever.”

“Don’t you go drama queen on me,” she drawled in her affected voice.

Shut up.

“You want to eat something?”

Shut up.

“It’s on me.”

Can’t she read the atmosphere?

“Drinks?”

Suddenly, my hands seemed to be the most interesting things on the world. I popped my knuckles. It was a bad habit I acquired from Aglaia, and remembering, my mood had turned for the worst.

“How about a kiss?”

“Cut it out, Marianne. Leave me alone,” I snapped angrily, but my voice came out all wrong. It was unconvincing and hoarse. The sound from the end of a tunnel.

“Ooh, I’m scared,” Marianne chuckled. She sat beside me in her impeccable lady-like manner, at the same time wrapping her white hands around my trembling fists atop the table. Her large brown eyes, the same knowing eyes she had hundreds of years ago, challenged mine, but I was too weak to bother so I let her be. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.