“Don’t expect romance and declarations of love from me. It’s not who I am. If you agree to this, there won’t be anyone else, for either of us. I was never good at sharing when I was young, and I’m worse now. I can’t let you agree to this unless you understand that you’ll have my body, but I don’t have a heart to give you.”
“Keep it. Giving away something you can’t live without leaves you to wither and die. I know, I watched it happen to my mother, and I will never be like her.”
“So, are you willing to give this a try?”
I looked at him, really looked at him. Could I keep my heart safe? Already he’d shown me glimpses of someone possibly as broken as I was under his polished veneer. He was dangerous to me because he might tempt me to do the one thing I’d always avoided, fall head over heels.
God help me. I thought I’d evaded temptation in the past. I’d run from every boyfriend who threatened to make me feel anything more than lust. Maybe, knowing he wasn’t going to fall in love with me would be the difference. We could fight off the loneliness together, and guard our hearts at the same time. It had to work because I didn’t think I had the strength to say no to him. No, that wasn’t exactly true. I didn’t want to walk away from him, and that scared me more.
“Yes. I want to give this, whatever this is, a try.”