I don't own you.

You are free to be with anyone, she says, I don't own you. Her gaze is indifferent.

But I don't want to, I reply.

I only want to be with you. That's what I wanted to say to her then, but I could not allow those words to escape from me. There is a hint of something more, of implications. As they waited on the back of my tongue, there was the faint taste of begging in them. I detested that; myself. So I'd swallowed those words back down as I met her gaze, feeling as though I might choke on them.

She had glanced away then, a strange expression on her face.

What had she been thinking, in that moment? Something, a memory perhaps, had flickered briefly in her eyes.

She turned her back to me. She was perched on the window ledge, her feet tucked up beneath her. I often found her that way, gazing out, but not seeing. Lost somewhere in her thoughts, her sunrise-colored hair falling haphazardly over her shoulders.

It is that view of her back that has been burned onto my mind.

It is that sunrise hair, the nape of her neck, and those pale, slender shoulders.

I don't own you, she says again. Only, she doesn't. I am just replaying those words over again inside my head.

But you do, I think. Did.

Still do.

I close my eyes and breathe deeply. These wounds are old, but never old enough. The scars that nobody else can see, are the ones that just don't seem to go away.

...