Three words that you never said…
It's stupid but he can't help thinking…what if he had let her finish.
Dare he think…she would have actually said it back.
No... that was just the blood loss.
She was never going to say them back to him.
Even if he hadn't said 'Goodbye Abigail'
Even if he had said "Jules" instead.
He couldn't really be foolish enough to think that Juliet'O Hara, a woman whose sole admission of interest in him had lasted all of a one and half minute following which she had never cared to revisit said matter would just declare her undying love to him because of one phone call
She wouldn't have said it back because saying that would make it real. This silly little game they'd been playing half-heartedly for so long.
And she doesn't want for any of it to be real. She just wants it to end. End in the natural way a harmless attraction would…should.
It's nice to have a reason for doing things like that. To build a wall against being hurt, a background story, a past.
But she doesn't have one. It's simply what she does. Keep people at distance so that they could never know the vulnerable parts inside her.
Whatever logic she uses to rationalize all of it, the x, y, z reasons why she thinks he's no good for her, deep down, there is something lacking on her part as well.
She is not the biggest confronter of feelings or relationships anymore than he is really.
She just hides that fact a lot better.
.
Because if he knew something about her, even third degree torture couldn't force her to share how she felt about him.
Not until she was ready
And she just isn't ready...
God knows if she'll ever be.
If she'll ever actually open up those vaults that she has so meticulously put up and let him see into her heart.
If she'll ever again take a risk again like that night at the drive-in.
With every day that passes, she just seems to be slipping away from him, forcing the distance to keep growing.
Pretty soon they're going to end up strangers, without anything to connect them except the occasional dead body.
And that thought hurts a hell lot more than the bullet that had ripped though his chest two days ago. It hurts more than anything ever will.
The idea that somehow someday, he'll just stop mattering to her at all because the lady in question is working very hard at making that happen.
He wants to shake her hard for being so stubborn
He wants to kiss her senseless till she forgets her own name
He needs to know so much…how she really feels.
But he doesn't want to know…
Not if she doesn't want to say them back to him…
He'll settle the for silence any day
Because it may not be an 'I love you'
But at least it's not an "I don't"
