The word hate landed clean but not hissed in an angry spat.
"I hate that you're treating me like a victim. I'm not fragile, Phei." She pressed more closer—"For once—just close your eyes,kiss me, make love to me like you're supposed to. Without feeling sorry for me. Because that hurts me more than what the Legacies ever could."
Her fingers curled into the collar of his shirt—small, determined fists. Not pleading but definitely claiming.
"The fact that you want me and I want you and we can't have each other because you're too busy protecting me from something that already happened and is already over—" She exhaled, shaky. "Phei…"
She pulled back just enough to look up.
What she found were his eyes—amethyst gone glassy, shimmering with something wet he was holding in through sheer stubbornness and failing badly. The purple caught the dim sodium glow of the parking-lot lights and fractured like broken glass.
He wasn't blinking. He couldn't. If he blinked, it would spill.
She knew.
