Skin Deep ✔️

Chapter Seventeen

"Tonoya?" Ezra frantically waves a hand in front of my face. "I don't think you heard me I said Im in love with you."

I heard him. I heard him loud and clear and I can't believe he would do this to me. What kind of sick joke was this? How could someone who radiates everything i's not be in love with me. It doesn't make sense.

"You don't love me." I tell him, looking down at my shoes. "Ezra you don't love me."

"I don't think you really have a choice in the matter." He chuckles dryly trying to bring me into his arms.

I squirm out of his grasp tears hot on my cheeks. "I need you not to love me because if you do it doesn't make sense. nothing makes sense and everything that's happened to me was some kind of unnecessary punishment."

"What are you talking about?" He asks me, his green eyes no longer bright and filled with hope. "I'm bearing my heart out to you and you're telling me not to? Why is it so impossible for me to love you?"

"Look at us Ezra!" I'm screaming now, my mouth is moving a hundred miles per hour and what's worse is I don't even know if I believe half the thing I am saying to him. "Look at me and then look at you. Think about all the looks we'd get, the looks we already get. I'm not ready. It's easy for you but it isn't easy for me. You will never experience life from my point of view."

He looks angry and tears fall from his eyes. "Why does everything only go skin deep for you? I have loved you ever since I have known you. You are all I think about night and day and it kills me that you don't see how amazing you are how bewitching you are. Tonoya Johnson I can't live without you."

"Stop it." I demand, wiping my eyes. "Stop it. Stop it. Stop it."

"I can't." He cries. "Why won't you let me love you? I need you to tell me why?"

"My whole life has been this giant shit storm Ezra. How can you love me when I have no idea who I am? Who I'm supposed to be? You can't love me if there is nothing to love. I'm not even a person, just a shell. My whole life has just been one racist bitch after the other. Has been one hate crime after the other. That doesn't just go away because some white boy claims that he's in love with me. The suffering and insecurity that comes with that doesn't just go away. Don't you get that?"

He looks taken aback and furrows his eyebrows. "Tonoya you know I didn't mean it like that. I want to be there for you like how you're always there for me. Don't push me away."

"It isn't about you Ezra." I say, cupping his face into my hands. "It's about me not being able to go after what I want because of everything that's holding me back. Because of all the pain and my inability to find myself. Every day it feels like I'm drowning, and I can only breathe when I'm with you, but I need to breathe on my own. I need to be able to stand on my own two feet. So, you bringing me here and telling me you love me is ruining that because it feels like everything that happened to me was for nothing and it was some big prank. I need to grow as a person and being in a relationship isn't going to help with that."

"Ok." He says, touching my hand that rests on his face. "Go, do what you have to do. I'll help you. I'll wait for you."

"I don't want you to." I tell him.

He doesn't say anything but plants a kiss on my cheek as he walks away which sets me off. I thought I had experienced heartbreak a thousand times over, that id gotten used to it by now. I thought my heart broke every time someone rejected my friendship, but nothing could've ever prepared me for this. It feels like concrete is drying in my chest and I can't breathe. I slide down the wall, backing myself up into a corner and cry because it's all I know how to do.

I cover my mouth with my hands not wanting them to hear me as try to calm down. After God knows how long, someone knocks at the door, and I hold my breath hoping they go away but they don't. Isaac enters the room a sad smile on his face.

"Ezra went for a walk." He informs me and I nod. "He also told me what happened."

"I'm sorry." I say.

He takes a seat next to me and pulls me into his arms, kissing the top of my head. "I love you, Toni. Not romantically but so much that I need you in my life. Always. Don't run away from us, from our family."

"Can i please be alone?" I ask and he nods pushing himself to his feet.

"Let me know when you want me to take you home." He says casually.

I shake my head at him. "I think I'm just going to walk."

He leaves the room after a moment, and I stay exactly where I am as the tears begin to fall again. I hold myself because I don't know what else to do and because Ezra's isn't here to do it for me.