Your Mark on Me

Chapter 39: Omens

We left the party at the Savoy and came back to the apartment a little before midnight.

We made love and I thought Mark wasn't as into it as usually, but didn't give it much importance then. Maybe he was tired; I knew I was, after such a stressful evening.

I thought he had fallen asleep shortly after because he hadn't moved and had been silent for a long time, so I was startled when his fingers brushed along my thigh, his breathy whisper tickling my cheek: "Scarlett. Do you love me?"

Something in his voice triggered my alarm bells. Something was bothering him.

"Do you even need to ask that? Of course I do! I basically worship you." I chuckled, trying to make light of it and he smiled back at me, but it was a weird, sad smile that I didn't like. 

"How do you know?"

"What do you mean?" I lifted myself up on my elbow, so I could see his face.

"How do you know it's love? You've never loved anyone else before."

I stared at him, taken aback. "I... just know."

"But you could be getting it mixed up with something else, couldn't you? How can you be so sure?"

Here it came again. That condescending tone that I hated so much.

"Oh, come on. I know what I feel. Don't patronise me."

"I'm not. I just..." He cupped my cheek and looked at me, as if he really wanted to say something. I waited, but he didn't continue.

"You just what?"

Earlier in the evening he wanted a house and a life with me, and now we were back to this same damned conversation? I grasped his hand and moved it away, but he didn't seem to mind. Instead, he took my hand and held it in his, looking at it with strange eyes.

"Such a small hand." His hand slid down my wrist, his thumb and forefinger enclosed in a circle around it. "Such small everything."

I unwillingly blushed, remembering another part of me that was embarrassingly small.

"All of you. So delicate. Like a china doll that I can't stop being scared that I might break."

"Jeez, Mark, what's with you? Where's this coming from?"

He cupped my face again, stroking it with his thumb. "Have I ever told you how adorable I find you? All I want to do is hold you and take care of you, make sure you stay safe and happy."

He bit his lip before letting out a long sigh. "But what if... it's me that you should be kept safe from?"

I opened my mouth, but he didn't give me the chance to say something.

"What if you're growing up too fast because of me? I don't want you to start a life you're not ready for. At sixteen, your biggest worries should be a test at school, or whether your crush will ask you to the prom. You should be giggling away with your friends, not going through family drama, or running away from home. Definitely not sleeping with a man who's almost twenty years older than you."

"But Mark. You said it was fine as long as we love each other. And I do love you."

The way he unexpectedly raised his tone made me flinch.

"You don't know that! You're getting into something you can't possibly understand. Sometimes love is not enough, you know? Sometimes things are more complicated than that. You might be throwing your life away for something that might not even prove to be what you thought it was. You're too young... too inexperienced to know. And I don't know either! God, it's like I don't know anything anymore."