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But when she’d kissed hi fro him to feel, he’d known he had lost And so he’d deferred to his backup plan

Draw a line beneath the relationship Make it a transaction, like every sexual encounter that had come before Make it so she wasn’t different So she wasn’t essential

And she had cried Every tear a drop of acid inside hi away the scars, the protection

He felt like hell He had betrayed her, like so many other people in her life He had let her down He had hurt her

He had never hated himself more Not even as he’d stripped down for women he didn’t even want and followed their every command Not even then

He got into his car and threw it in Drive, going too fast down the winding driveway that led out to the ure out how to pull emotion from his chest as he’d once done

To once again separate his desires from his needs His mind from his body

But the scent of Julia was on his clothes His skin He had a feeling it went down deeper than that That she had a mark on him, in him, that would not be so easily removed

The need to do that wasn’t about preserving his business Wasn’t about preventing outbursts inhimself major accounts

It was just about survival

He had to find a way to survive

Suddenly the pain in his chest was so blinding he had to pull his car off the road He sat and waited, trying to breathe, waiting for the feeling of loss, the feeling of emptiness to pass

But it didn’t It just kept crashing over hies of Julia Julia, excited about a project Julia, raa

It took him a moment to realize his cheeks et, too, like the Julia in his mind’s eye

He couldn’t remember the last time emotion had had so much control over him, the last time the pieces of hi out in pain over the loss of her

And it was his own fault He had pushed her away Because he had been afraid of this This pain, this loss of his protection When everything was fragh to deal with it all Emotion went to its own place to be dealt with later, as did the needs of his body