It would be a mistake to offer him my heart when what he truly needed was healing.
Kester always had a way of making me see how much he claimed to love me. But his love was the strangest kind.
It wasn’t tender or easy. It wasn’t the kind that wraps you in warmth and tells you everything’s going to be okay.
No.
His love was sharp-edged and possessive. A kind of fierce, consuming obsession that made me feel both treasured and trapped.
And that made me wonder…
Since I walked into his life as a child, barely tall enough to reach his elbow, did he really love me? Or he just had the aching need to possess something when everything else had always been out of his control?
Because the truth was that Kester almost never had control over his own life. All he had was control over other people and the situations around him… He did everything within his power to ensure he stayed in control every single time.
From the little I know, his childhood was… sad and fragmented. But that was all I knew.
I knew almost nothing about how his mother finally died after being maltreated by his father. Although I was still really young then, I always heard Mum and my late father talk about it when they thought I was asleep in their arms after dinner.
However, my perspective changed when Mum married Kester’s father and they seemed so in love with each other.
He was charming, attentive, and loving to me and Mum. The kind of man who kissed Mum’s forehead and brought her flowers for no reason. They rarely argued. Barely raised voices at each other. And I started to think maybe the rumors were wrong. Maybe people just loved to gossip. Maybe love could be simple, after all.
And Kester never agreed to open up or answer any of my curious questions about it and why he and his father were always at loggerheads, barely ever tolerating each other to date.
Standing here and staring at the man sitting on the bed, lost in whatever was on his phone, I wondered how much love he actually had as a child. Because, all I sa at that moment was a man who would do anything to be loved.
It made my heart ache because I wasn’t even sure where this was going.
But for now, seeing how much he was willing to bend for me and how far he’d go just to make me smile, I had to use it to his own advantage.
(
It was time to help him bend in the right direction.
I stepped closer to him and sat beside him. He looked painfully handsome in just his briefs. He was shirtless, and I couldn’t help but trail my gaze over his tattooed skin.
God, no man should look this good. It felt too wrong… Too unfair. Like a sin wrapped in skin.
“Baby? You need something?” He asked, abandoning whatever he was doing on his phone to give me his full attention.
His gaze rested on me and… Those eyes… So innocent yet dangerous.. They pinned me in place.
I swallowed, “Yes, Kes. I want us to talk…” I said softly.
I didn’t miss the flicker of discomfort that shadowed his features and the subtle frown tugging at his brows.
“Oh, no, baby,” he muttered with a sharp sigh, dragging a hand over his face, “Let’s enjoy a moment of peace between us. Let’s just… shut the fucking world out for once. I get scared of having conversations with you recently.”
He turned to face me fully, and I saw the panic and tension all over him. His entire body was taut like a wire pulled to breaking point, I have apologized for everything and anything I’ve done to you that you didn’t like. And I am ready to do whatever it takes to show you that I… I want this. I want us.”
No.
No, no. He was steering this in the wrong direction.
This wasn’t about us. Not in the way he thought.
“No, Kes… That’s…” He didn’t let me finish.
“Look, baby, even if you don’t love me yet, that’s okay. I swear it’s okay. The love I have for you is enough for both of us. We can start there, can’t we?”
He was spiraling. Again.
His voice cracked with desperation as he reached out for my hands with his trembling ones. His eyes darkened, the edges of his control fraying at the seams. His brows were drawn tight, and I saw the pain spreading across every inch of him.
He looked like a little boy – frightened and forgotten – begging to be loved,
And it hurt me so much.
“Just give me this chance,” he whispered, “Say yes to me, love. The Moon Goddess was wise to give me you. She knew you’re my life. She knew I’d die if She ever dared to pair you with someone else. Les just-“
“Kester! I called firmly, and he stopped talking, “That’s not what this is about. I wanted us to talk about something else. Not about the whole chaos going on in our world.”
He blinked, confused, caught somewhere between dread and hope.
His eyes searched mine, almost childlike, and for a heartbeat, he looked like he didn’t know where he was, who he was, or if this moment was safe. He blinked again, confusion swimming behind the storm in his gaze.
I took his hands, steadying me despite the tremor beneath my skin
“Kester,” I said gently, “I need you to promise me
His jaw clenched. “Anything.” omething.”
“I want you to promise to tell me the truth about ask you.”
His brows knitted together as if that alone frightened him. But still, he nodded, “1 I’ll tell you the truth.” swear.
I inhaled slowly before letting the first question
“Did you ever finish therapy?”
He looked away.
And there it was-that flinch. That flinch he always had whenever something real threatened the version of himself he tried to hold together.
“No,” he said quietly, in a brittle voice. “I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t go there by choice,” he muttered, dragging a hand down his face again, slower this time, like it was taking effort to hold back something buried too deep. “Karina set me up. She made my father put me there.”
My heart sank.
“So… you stopped because it was her idea?”
He looked back at me, and there was something cracked in his gaze stopped because there’s nothing wrong with me, Kasmine. I’m not some broken, messed case. I didn’t need help. I don’t need help.”
I swallowed the ache in my throat. “Kes…”
“All I ever needed and would ever need is you,” he whispered, “Can’t you see what you’re doing to me? How much you’ve already changed me? You’re the only help I’ll ever need.”
My throat tightened.
This wasn’t a man in denial. No, This was a man gripping tightly to the only thing that’s kept him afloat me. It broke something in me. It made my next words tremble on my tongue, but I had to say them.
“No, Kester,” I said softly, You’re not fine. You’re not okay.”
His face darkened, but he didn’t interrupt me.
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