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shoulders. Nothing like before, but at least he was touching me again. And I
needed that, more than I cared to admit.
“I wasn’t escaping him, you know? Everybody thought I was, but I
wasn’t. Daniel had bruised my heart, but I wasn’t running away from that. It
was everything else. Everybody looked at me differently. Like I had changed
or something had changed in the way they saw me. As if I were this broken
thing now. Dropped by Daniel, harassed, made fun of. Everybody whispered,
Oh, poor thing. How is she going to bounce back from this? They treated me
as damaged goods. They still do. Every time I came back home alone, they
look at me with pity. Every time I said I’m still single, they nod and smile
sadly.” Shaking my head, I released all the air in my lungs. “I hate it, Aaron.”
I could hear the emotion in my voice choking my words because I did hate it.
“That’s why I came back as little as I did.”
But then I also hated how much I feared that a part of it was perhaps true.
Why hadn’t I been able to trust anybody with my heart otherwise?
“Everything that had happened hurt me, left a scar, but it didn’t break
me.” I swallowed the lump in my throat, wanting to believe my own words.
“It didn’t.”
A sound, deep and husky and pained, came from behind me. Before I
knew what was happening, Aaron’s arms came around my shoulders, and I
was engulfed by him. Wrapped into his chest. Warm and hard and safe and
… a lot less alone. A lot more complete than I had been seconds before.
Aaron buried his head in the nook of my neck from behind, and I felt the
urge to comfort him. So, I did.
“I’m not broken, Aaron,” I told him in a whisper, although perhaps it was
for my own reassurance. “I can’t be.”
“You are not,” he said on my skin. Tightening his hold on me. Bringing
me closer. “And I know that even if something did break you—because that’s
life and no one is invincible—you’d still put the pieces back together and
remain the brightest thing I’d ever seen.”
My hands went around that pair of arms wrapped around my shoulders,
which pulled me into his chest, as if he were scared I’d go up in smoke if he
didn’t. And I hung on to him equally desperately. As if my next breath
depended on it.
We remained that way for a long while. And slowly, very slowly, our
bodies relaxed into each other. They melted together. I focused on Aaron’s
breath, on the earnestness of the moment, on his heartbeat against my back,