Against all Sanity

~26~

Hey again. I would say happy reading, but it won't be happy so... prepare.

What?

Nothing made sense to me at this moment. Was it even Landon who had spoken those words to me? What did he even say? I'm confused... I don't know what to say, what to think.

"What...?"

"I love you," Landon repeated, this time louder and more surely. "I have for some time, I think. I don't know when, but I know that I do."

I was speechless, absolutely and utterly speechless. I couldn't even form coherent thoughts; much less get them out through my unmoving lips, so instead I just stared. I said nothing, and stared at Landon with wide eyes like he had just grown two heads – which right now would make way more sense.

"Please say something..."

"I can't," were the brilliant first words that slipped out of my slightly open mouth. "We're not even together."

"But we could be... I want to be," Landon confessed, now slightly shy again. It was weird seeing Landon like this, all shy and quiet, but I couldn't bring myself to tease him about it because I couldn't think.

Everything had been so perfect. We had had fun together with no obligations, and definitely no feelings involved. Yeah sure I cared about him, but that wasn't because I liked liked him. It was because we were great friends... great lovers. I hadn't even considered changing that, I hadn't thought about ruining the perfect thing we had together.

"I don't know what to say," I confessed.

"Say you want to be with me too," Landon said as pressed his hands to both sides of my cheeks. His hands were cold – as were my cheeks – but none of that had any effect on my right now. To be honest I barely noticed it. "Say that you love me back."

"I know what you want me to say." I grabbed both of his hands in mine and slowly peeled them away from my cheeks; I kept on holding them loosely in mine though, because I didn't dare to let him go. I was scared that I was going to lose him then, especially after my next words.

"I'm just not sure that I can say them."

Now it was his turn to look baffled. "What?"

"It's just so sudden," I quickly elaborated when Landon tore his hands from mine, hurt evident on his face. "I never once even considered you having feelings for me. We used to hate each other for God's sake! And when we started this you were very clear that this was about lust and that it needed to be kept that way!"

"Well I changed my mind!" Both of us were half yelling by now.

"You can't just do that! You can't just break you rules and then expect me to follow."

"So you don't have any feelings for me?" Landon's words were glazed with a venomous poison mixed from sadness and anger, and they stung my skin - and my heart - every time he spoke.

"I do like you, you're one of my best friends," He stumbled visually backwards, "and I lust after you more than I ever have before. You do things to me, things I can't for the life of me explain...but I just don't-"

"-know," Landon finished off. "You don't know. Yeah, you've said that already."

"I just didn't want things to change. They were so good the way they were," I said, my voice begging him to understand... what? That I didn't feel the same way for him? Why I couldn't tell him that I felt the same way for him? That was the problem after all, me trying to explain him something that I couldn't explain myself.