Wrap your teeth around the pavement

hide your secrets, disguise your weakness

and lose yourself inside your busy head

She thinks she understands what he needs, what he wants, and he focuses on her with more clarity, more intent. She lists them out, an ability to not be held back, to do what he chooses, and that she wouldn’t care either way. But she would. He knows this, she knows this, that spark of jealousy hidden within his gut from the bite that Nate had given her was all that much more intense. But those were simply feelings, ones that would pass, ones that could grow.

He doesn’t know what he wants, in the end, as per usual.

She shrugs, offering what she can, and he exhales slowly through his nose as he considers it. “I think that my relationships right now work best as friends with benefits.” It’s a quietly uttered answer. “You can stay with me through it, or not. That is your choice. But I don’t want to be the one for the tears on your cheeks if my attention is elsewhere.” He tries to convey a soft smile for the brutal honesty of his words.

Since arriving in Caido he’d never had the best track record. And tying himself to someone only made it that much more difficult in the end. “I can’t give you the sun and the moon and the sky, but I can be there to help you until you get them on your own. Whether that’s only friends or with a bit more tossed in the mix.” He searches her gaze to let her decide. An ultimatum of no titles, no nothing aside from fun and distraction and friendship. Those are his terms.

burn your bridges, and leave no witnesses

all alone inside your busy head

SuNJATA