she'll lie and steal and cheat and beg you from her knees
make you thinks she means it this time
How can he not see the ways that she lies dismantled at his feet?
How can he not see the ways that she is picked apart, bones picked clean, ravaged with a love that has so wholly consumed her that she was burned before she even realized it?
It sears across her belly—his presence and his distance each cleaving into her breast with a sharpness that causes her to suck in her breath between her teeth, the ache spreading through her bones. She has dreamt of him for so long that it is nearly impossible for her to unwind the ghost of him from the reality that stands before her, the reality that burns before her. But she aches for him nevertheless. She wants to reach for him. She wants to run from him. She is as equally in love with him as she is terrified of him.
But before she can make the decision, every muscle within her taut, ready to flee, he closes the distance between them and his words are like separate bullets—shredding through whatever defenses she thought that she had. For the first time in years, she feels tears escape her eyes, falling down her cheeks. “Of course I haven’t felt alive,” the confession is brittle on her tongue, shattering even as she says it. “I have spent years running. Years fleeing from something that strikes fear down to my very marrow.”
Another shuddering breath, her laughter weak and choked.
He touches her, and she doesn’t bother to hide the tremor of need that races through her, the fury that had just seconds ago incinerated her bones slipping into her own fears, into her own terror. She leans into him, knowing that each touch, each embrace is just another thing that she will dream about. This can’t last, she thinks, but she cannot tear herself away. This will end in flames, she thinks, but she reaches out, her mouth tracing the edges of his face, memorizing the slopes and the valleys of his features.
He pleas with her, and she closes her eyes, shaking her head.
“I-I don’t,” her voice catches as she leans against him, forehead pressed to his neck, “I don’t know how.”
she'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair
but I still love her, I don't really care
