Binding 13

With a devilish grin etched on his face, Joh

I turned scarlet. "Wh-what?"

"Too easy," he laughed, thoroughly delighted with himself.

Well aware that he had the upper hand but falling short on a decent comeback to an unfortunately accurate assessment, I resorted to sticking my tongue out at him.

Joh

I popped my tongue back in and gaped at him. "Yeah, right."

"Try it," he dared, gri

My eyes widened and I jerked backwards.

I didn’t trust him not to follow up with the threat.

My reaction only made Joh

"Stop looking at me like that," he ordered, pressing a hand to his side to stop himself from laughing.

"Like what? I'm not doing anything!" I retorted, unable to stop the smile spreading across my lips. "You're the one threatening to snatch my tongue."

"It's that wide-eyed, nervous look you've got going on," Joh

I feigned disbelief. "I'm not sure I believe you."

"You believe me," he assured me in a confident tone.

"Oh, I do?" I arched a brow. "What makes you so sure?"

"Because you trust me," he responded with a huge, megawatt smile.

"I don’t trust anyone, Joh

Joh

"Because of something that happened?" he finally asked. "In your past?"

"Because of a lot of things," was all I replied, unable and unwilling to give him more.

"Bad things?" he pressed, voice low and probing.

"Personal things," I croaked out, not liking the sudden and serious turn this conversation had taken. I cleared my throat and then added, "Private things."

"Things that make trusting people hard," Joh

"No." Shaking my head, I clasped my hands together tightly and exhaled a heavy breath. "Things that make trusting people impossible."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I shook my head.

"You know what they say about a problem shared," he pressed.

"Not always," I whispered.

He studied me for a long moment, obviously mulling over my words.

"Do you want to know what I think?" he finally asked.

"What's that?"

"I think that you don’t want to trust anyone," he stated, continuing to push for more. "But you trust me despite yourself."

I opened my mouth to deny it, but stopped short, stumped on his words.

Was he right?

Did I trust him?

Perhaps I did in my own peculiar way.

I mean, I trusted that he wouldn’t intentionally attempt to hurt or sabotage me.

I trusted he was a good person with a kind heart and a beautiful mind.

But everything else?

The scary parts?

The terrifying feelings he provoked that I didn’t dare read into for fear of the unknown?

I wasn’t so sure.

"Because you can, Sha

"I'm not afraid of you," I shot back defensively, feeling thrown off kilter by his eerily accurate assessment.

"Good," Joh

"Well, I'm not."

"I'm glad."

Feeling incredibly exposed and vulnerable, I just sat there, unable to form a coherent sentence, as I stared back at the boy who had been throwing my heart through hoops since that very first day.

He'll let you down, the defensive part of my brain argued. He'll hurt you worse than all the others.

"I won't," Joh

"You promise?" I whispered, then quickly chided myself.

When I was anxious, I always asked for a promise.

It was a terrible habit I had from spending years of my life living in a constant state of uncertain anxiety.

Usually, I asked for those promises from my brother, and Joey supplied me with an abundance of them to ebb some of the stress.

Whether my brother meant to keep those promises or not, the small affirmation, however impossible or ridiculous, appeased something inside of me for a little while, making life a little more bearable.

"I promise," Joh

In that moment, and with those two small words, Joh

"Please don’t do that," I whisper/begged, as I frantically tried to repair the hole he'd left in me with facets of information like: don’t get attached because he's leaving soon, and past experiences like the night he hurt me, or worse, the night he rejected me.

Joh

"Make promises," I breathed, heart slamming against my ribcage. "Please don’t."

"I just did," he told me unapologetically. "It's out there, and I'm not taking it back."

My stomach flipped.

My heart jackknifed.

My entire body trembled.

This isn’t safe, my brain warned.

Block him out.

Protect yourself.

Don’t let him in.

"I don’t go back on my word, Sha

Then he dropped his attention to the notebook still in his hands and began to furiously scribble something inside before handing it back to me a minute or so later.

"What do you say?" he asked with a smirk.

I glanced down at the page and choked out a laugh.

In neat capital letters were the words: Sha