like the bullet you never saw coming; beth

[adna]

one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing
one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling
one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide

She wishes that she could get a rise out of him.

But like the last time they met, it is an impossible task.

It is impossible to bait him and trick him into falling into this vicious anger that swells in her throat so easily. Again, she finds that she rails against him—coming undone and showing all the ugliest parts of her. Again, she finds that he just stands there, observant and quiet and not sinking down to her level.

Hatred and a painful ache beat bruises into her chest.

“Of course I don’t,” she says with tears in her eyes. They fall hot to her cheeks. “I never regretted it for a second—not even when you left,” she says because the truth always burns the back of her throat, so ready for her to spit it out. She closes her eyes and swallows, wishing she could wipe these tears from her face.

When she opens her eyes again, they glitter with her pain.

“Is that what you want me to say? That you were able to get up and leave the next day, move on with your life and I couldn’t? That I haven’t been able to do anything but think about you and m—“ her voice catches in her throat and she has to swallow again, the knives of it burying deep, “miss you?”

She laughs, tears on her cheeks.

“Congratulations, Beth. You win.”

She shakes her delicate head and takes a step back, something like panic rising in her as she realizes how much she has told him. How vulnerable she has become—and how it was all her doing. Always hers.

ADNA