I don't know about you, but when people tell me they love me, I tend to break down in tears. Just my personal reaction.
So here I was, bawling even harder as the guy who had hurt me in everyway hurt me in another way, the worst way yet. He loved me, after everything that he'd done to me, he said he loved me.
How could you hurt someone like that when you loved them? I wasn't mystified, I was just enraged with a lousy way of showing it. Instead of jumping on my feet, snarling, my hands curling into fists at my side, I was hunched over, huddled by the man I half-hate and half-love, pathetically sobbing my eyes out with an endless supply of tears.
I hated how weak I was right now. I felt overly vulnerable. Like a turtle without its shell or a clownfish without the anemone. I wanted my armor, my mask, back on. It hid all the weak thoughts passing through my mind, all the hints of how I may not be as strong and capable as I seem.
"Shh, Max, it's okay," Fang whispered in my ear, brushing a curl away from my face. He continued to rub my back soothingly. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him shoo the kids and Iggy away. Iggy hesitated, glancing around cautiously without really seeing anything. He must have decided it was okay to leave because I soon heard a door closing and muffled feet heading away down the hallway back towards the kitchen.
"Max, I love you, and I am so sorry," Fang's voice broke on the last few words. I looked up in surprise. I had never heard so much strangled emotion in one sentence, especially coming from Fang.
"You should be sorry," my growl didn't give off the effect I had wanted because my voice was thick with tears.
"I know, Max, I know," he removed his arm from around my shoulder and hid himself in a huddled ball, sinking his hand in between his knees. It was similar to the position I had been in mere seconds ago.
His body was shaking slightly. From crying, I realized with a start. Fang was crying. Fang was crying. He was crying with remorse. I almost breathed a sigh of relief in that instant. He cared. He felt awful about what he had done.
I crawled over to Fang and pulled him into me, half dragging him onto my lap. He didn't resist at all. I stroked his forehead gently, my other hand wrapped protectively over him.
"I know, Fang, I know you're sorry," I said, instinctively holding him tighter as I spoke.
He shuddered and fell slightly limp in my arms. "Max," he choked out.
"Shh, it's okay," I said, slightly hypocritically. I knew nothing he did was ever going to make up for what he did, but it was my turn to comfort him and he and I both knew that that meant even possibly speaking untruths.
"Max, I still love you. I always have. But you are the most stubborn, closed off, and confusing person I have ever met."
"Why am I so confusing?" I asked. I thought he'd always been able to read me like a book. He'd always done so in the past, delving farther than even I did into what I was feeling. Fang had known what I was feeling before even I knew.
He let out a hoarse chuckle. "Because you're so afraid love."
"I am not!" I instantly retorted. "I love Rose, Angel, Gazzy, Nudge, Iggy-"
"-I don't mean in that way," Fang cut me off. "I mean you're afraid of falling in love. You think you'll get hurt, it'll tear things apart, break you. But, Max," he sat up and looked me straight in the eye. I shivered with the intensity of it. "I will not hurt you and I will not break you."
But you already did. The pain and hurt flooded back to me. I knew it was visible in my eyes. Fang's eyes widened a fraction of an inch; he realized what he'd said.
"I will not hurt you ever again," he corrected himself, wincing on the correction.
I nodded, trying to compel myself to believe it. But I wasn't naïve. I wasn't an optimistic little teenage girl who wanted to be loved desperately by her boyfriend. I was a sixteen-year-old girl who had lived through so many traumatic experiences that she'd been toughened and shaped into a hardcore fighter. A survivor. Whatever didn't break me made me.
"Please, Max, give me a chance," Fang pleaded in a whisper. He pulled me into him. Suddenly I was overcome by exhaustion and my eyelids fluttered shut. "Please, please…" a distant whisper echoed above me, above the blackness settling in on me. Here, in Fang's arms, I sunk into the darkness once more.