Take It - Part Two
Page 14
“I’m begging you to choose me instead of anything else in the world. I need to be your most important thing, or I can’t be anything. Because for me, what you do to me, what you mean to me, there’s no one else on that plane of existence. I’m clearly not that to you, so I have to walk away now.”
“Walking? Or running? Because that’s what it sounds like you’re doing. You really feel that way about me? Then how can you even think about spending another minute with that other guy? That’s being a coward.”
“Don’t you dare,” I shout, slamming my palm on the table with a loud thwack. “You don’t get to judge where I find refuge from your storm. Wherever I decide to hide, whoever I pretend to be, is just a way to protect myself from you.”
“You don’t have to protect yourself from me. I told you I love you. I’ve only said that to one other person in my life.”
“And where’s that other person now? How does being loved by Harrison work out for someone? I’d like to know.”
Like a deflating balloon, Harrison braces himself against the wall and drops his head. “Jenny please,” he begs again.
“I’m not going to break into a lab with you. I’m not going to expose myself in any other way for you. I can’t.” Grabbing the door handle I hesitate, unable to believe the height I’m plummeting from. Mere minutes ago I was back where I’ve been aching to be. But the problem with being so high is having so far to fall.
“Jenny,” I hear Harrison plead again, but his words are sucked back into the room by the slamming door. Flattening my hair and adjusting my dress, I swim through the sea of people like I’m fighting for my life, ignoring the elbows and hips I’m plowing into.
The only thought in my head . . . what have I done?
I am better than this. All of this. Tracey’s words, the ones I tucked away, come flooding in from wherever I stored them. Whatever power I’ve turned over to Pierce I am taking back. The path that led me to this party tonight, even when I didn’t want to come, is one I’m stepping the hell off of. That stops now. Whether my choices are faulty or my judgment questionable, I start using my own brain again, right now. For some reason I thought turning my life over to someone else, letting him into the drivers seat, would help me arrive at a better destination.
I’m done, whether Pierce likes it or not. Even if my mother is painfully disappointed. I’m not living my life for other people. It ends now.
Continue the story in Take It, Book 3 available January 2015
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