' don’t hate me. ' ;)
The words are so earnestly spoken in the dead of the night that it causes her heart to clench tightly, though she stays still, doesn’t move so much as a muscle — she wonders if he can see through it, read the look in her eyes should she open them for him. He’s gotten uncannily good at that, at reading her, at understanding the smallest of her movements or looks, at hearing the things she wouldn’t say, even the things she couldn’t.
Quite honestly it was terrifying.She’s not quite sure if it’s good or bad.Maybe both.
All she knows is that while she may be his, he’s not hers — & perhaps that is what has the words springing to his lips, whispered into her ear in the darkness when he thinks her asleep ( but GOD the darkness never lets her, her GUILT doesn’t let her ) tickling her as the words make their way past dark locks.
All she knows is that in the end, she’s going to hurt him, & yet he’s the one asking not to be hated.
One day, her clock will hit those fated zeroes, supposedly finding her “soulmate,” & effectively b r e a k i n g what they had ( & perhaps in some ways, them. ) He who’s eyes were full of stories she wanted to spend hours unraveling, he who had managed to bring her smile back to her face despite everything she was going through ( did he know how rare a sight her smile had once been? Does he know that few can bring it about anymore? Or does he think she’s always like this because this is all he’s seen. She wonders if by not telling she’s doing him a favor or making things worse. )
Sleeping in the most innocent sense of the word ( for anything else would be too cruel, she could already b r e a t h e her scent on his skin as it was ) she often lies awake in his arms wondering — wondering if this was hurting him ( not them ) more than it was helping. If walking away that day in the woods would have been better than dragging this on. She had hoped that by spending time together she could show him how wrong she was ( for him, in general ), how she needed time on her own before she could find another half ( wasn’t that why she had ended things with Scott? She had needed time to put her own pieces back together before finding another to make her whole. ) But what if one day, she did put herself back ( something that didn’t seem so impossible a task ) then what? Did she just walk away? Would she remain with him & have him always know that he wasn’t the one she was “meant” to be with? ( Or would he leave? )
Was he asking her not to hate him, because he thought she could never love him? Or was it an apology because he was the one who would one day leave her ( because he had gotten so good at reading her — could he tell that she couldn’t bear the thought of being the one to hurt him that way. ) The idea had been to help him & yet here they were — not quite broken
— but his voice was, his apology was ( her heart was. )
She can’t say the words aloud, can’t even find the right words to say even if she could, so instead she shifts in the bed, burying her head in his chest, draping an arm around him, finding comfort in him & hoping to provide him with the same.
— Was he really the one at risk of being hated?
It’s only hours later, when his breathing has evened, his hand wrapped tightly around her frame, holding her to him that it hits her;
Maybe don’t hate me is his “I love you.”
& for that, she’s not sure who she hates more
