She hated that word, love. and for most of her life, she hated when people mentioned love. No one knew why, she didn't want to talk about it. She was demanding and harsh and violent, but underneath her mask of hatred, she just wanted to be loved too.
And he did just that. He swooped into her life like some fucking knight in shining armor, and honestly, it pissed her off. No guy was supposed to make her feel the way she felt when he was around. They were opposites though. Her heart was black, like the chipped nail polish that adorned her fingers. His heart was golden and free. She thought she had convinced herself that she wasn't in love with him.
That's just when he decided that he loved her. Anytime he saw her, he had this horrible urge to push her up against a wall and kiss her, because damn, she was just that gorgeous. Her lips tasted like coffee (no surprise there) and she carried an aroma of jasmine and sweet vanilla and sour blackberries. The way her hair cascaded down her back in perfectly formed dark curls and the way she smirked seductively was so captivating to him.
He told her he loved her one day. He didn't know what she was going to do, but she turned and looked at him with this hard expression that clearly read, fuck off. But he knew better than that. Beneath all that makeup she put on to cover her flaws, beneath her cold, hard, metal exterior, he knew that she was feeling more than fuck off. It was like her icy eyes were the fragile glass that let you peer into her soul. It was like she was yearning to tell him the same. She stayed quiet, but he knew.
He didn't quite know what it was, why she was so scared of love. He wanted her to be comfortable with him loving her, so began on his everlasting journey, three words at a time. I love you. He'd say almost too frequently. At first, she didn't know what to do when he said it. She had butterflies in her stomach whenever he said it. She liked those lovely, demonic butterflies that inhabited her. But those black butterflies were accompanied by the overwhelming feeling that she should punch him, or swear at him, or do something to damage his naive, golden soul. Something to make him hurt the same way she did.
In the beginning, the moments when he said he loved her were awkward; filled with silence and unspoken passion and puzzling feelings that crept back up again and again. Then, he continued to say it so often that the words became numb and normal to her. She knew he wasn't lying when he said it, but the words held a strange warmth whenever he whispered them into her ear. It would have scared her if one day he stopped saying it.
I love you. The number of times he'd said those very words to her was infinite, yet she'd been to cowardly to repeat it back. She suddenly felt her nerves bubbling up when she stared into his mysterious dark chocolate eyes. She sat parallel to him on concrete floor in the hallway as the cool rain dripped down outside. They skipped class again, it was their fucked up tradition of sorts. Her fingers twisted around the laces of her scuffed combat boots, and she cradled a coffee with her left hand. She was close to admitting it. She was close to turning around to him, and saying that hauntingly compassionate phrase right back to him. She was done with this. If she didn't say it now, she would never utter those frightening words. She'd never been the type to let her dreams, horrific as they may be, pass her by. So she said it. I love you too.
The exact moment her lips parted to begin speaking, he knew what she was going to say. He grinned widely, foolishly almost. After months of telling her that he adored her, cherished her, loved her, she finally responding.
To her, love wasn't so hateful anymore.
Tell me you love me.
I love you.
Thoughts? xx