Page 22 of Lessons In Grey
I would win her over. I was going to play the deepest and most tantalizing game of foreplay I had ever played, and then I was going to fuck her until she saw that the stars that burned so brightly in the sky were the same ones burning under her skin.
After I fucked her into oblivion, I would marry her, and she would be mine until the universe was nothing but dust and diamonds.
Emily Belle Navarro. It had a beautiful ring to it.
7
Emily
September 15th, 2021
Emily.”
I gasped, shielding my face instinctively as my heart skipped in fear.
It took a second for my muddled and groggy brain to remember where I was.
Shit.
My skin turned far too hot as I forced my hands down and straightened. “Sorry,” I muttered, my voice thick with sleep.
I wiped the drool from my chin and shoved my hair back, wondering how I must have looked to him, drooling and snoring, only to find his eyes cast down.
On my wrist.
I pulled my sleeves down, humiliation filling me. It wasn’t as if I had any grandiose delusions about how I wanted this manto see me, I didn’t care how he saw me, but the bruise was embarrassing. The way I received it was embarrassing, and I didn’t need him screwing around in my life.
“Snowflake.”
I shoved my things away and stood, forcing him back a step.
“Emily, wait.”
“See you later, Rags,” I waved over my shoulder, acting as if I couldn’t care less, when in reality, the muscles in my chest felt as if they had shifted into an angry anaconda and decided my bones were its next meal.
“Rings of Saturn.”
I slowed to a stop, the door still half a mile away it seemed. I gripped my bag strap, the pain in my arm flaring. At least he hadn’t seen that. What would he have thought of me then?
He would have seen a woman too weak to fight her own demons, she mutilated her own flesh to get them out.
If only he knew that I hadn’t meant it. It wasn’t pain I had been after, it was relief.
“The Rings of Saturn are filled with broken shards of moons and asteroids, ice and stone. I know the color purple seems so much less compared to that, but from in your head doesn’t that color hold more? Shards of patience lost, broken pieces of peace destroyed, cold crystals of undeserved pain, and shattered armor you thought you had perfected.”
I worked my hand at my side, my eyes falling to that left wrist. I worked my jaw, my eyes filling. Fuck. “I hate the color purple,” I finally said without looking back. “People let it become their whole identity, I don’t want that. I…Ineverwanted that.”
“Good,” he said, his voice closer, causing my breath to catch. “Don’t.”
My face twisted in hatred and disgust. Being around this man when I was exhausted, when my mind was too tired to hold its shields, was dangerous. He understood too much. I couldn’t let him near me, or my suffering would poison him just like it hadpoisoned mom and Charlie.
~~~
September 16th, 2021
“Yes, Emily, there are still good things left within you.”
“I don’t know how,” I whispered, my eyes filled with tears, my throat closing as I leaned over the table in the empty courtyard, the chilling air biting ruthlessly at my fingers.