Her heart is a mess of nerves and muscle and blood. Jumping and pounding, catching on her ribs, demanding her attention, pressing on her lungs and stopping her breath. He can't mean it. There was no way he can ever mean it. Why would he mean it?
She's a mess. A woman wrapped up in lies and deceit and death, drowning in the murder of her mother, her father's dependence on alcohol, her determination to get to the truth. She had been broken and stuck back together with bandaids and string, the cracks and scars showing through. She is wrecked and damaged and surrounded by walls. He can't mean it.
He stands there looking at her without expecting anything. She can see it in his eyes, those stunningly blue eyes that have been stuck in her head since the day she met him. That all knowing smirk is gone and all is left is sincerity and longing. He can't mean it.
She's bad for him. He's all bright and shiny and happiness. All he sees is the good, the light and the life of the world. She sees the dark, the blood and pain. And it's changed her. Her hands are stained with the blood of murderers and innocents alike, those she couldn't save and those who had to be stopped. She knows what a person is capable of, how low someone will sink to get what they want. The despair and rage and cruelty that he can never imagine and she hopes he will never witness. He can't mean it.
She will stain him mark his radiant world with the devastation and torment that is hers. She will take his world and ruin it, change it and not for the better. It will be his downfall and her ruin. She will not inflict her world on others, it is hers to struggle through alone. He can't mean it.
But he does, she sees it in his eyes and his mouth and his face. She sees it everyday when he brings her coffee and makes her laugh and reminds her to eat. She sees it when he makes her life easier to bear, when he pushes and prods, when he makes her think. When he keeps turning up. When no matter how cruel, how unimaginably brutal she is, he keeps coming back. With his humour and his laugh and sparkling blue eyes that make the world seem a little less dark. He means it. But he can't.
She curls in on herself, gripping her sides, trying to keep herself together. He has shown her how her life could be, how easy it would be to simply let it all go and step out from the shadows. And it's killing her. To see how the other half lives, those without her scars and her pain. Without her demons.
She looks at him and lets him see it all. Lets it fill her eyes until it's all she can do to stop it spilling out. And suddenly he's there surrounding her and saying it again and again until its all she hears. Iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou. She hears that instead of the pounding of her heart, the screaming in her mind, the pain in her soul iloveyou. Lets it fill her until its lifting her off the ground, until it pushes against her bones and muscles, until she forgets everything but this iloveyou. She feels it there between her lungs, straightening out the nerves and muscles and blood, stopping the pounding and jumping, letting her relax, letting her breathe iloveyou. She lets it sit there for seconds or minutes or days or weeks or months, she lets it sit there until she can let it out. Till she can say it back without fear of staining him.
I love you too.