Repress. Deny

He won’t tell her that he loves her. He’ll hold her, kiss her and make love to her but he never says it. He won’t say it because he thinks it will make her stay. If he makes the words unattainable, if he withholds it, she’ll stay and would make it her life mission to make him say it. Or maybe, he won’t get his heart broken if he pretends he’s uninterested.

But the idea that he is, that the words are just here, in his mouth, rolling inside his cheeks terrifies him. He’s so terrified to be without her - that this plan may backfire; that he may risk alienating her over three little words; so terrified that he’d deny himself something he wants to say, to do; because he does – he loves her. Infinitely.

That thought, that cruel calculating thought, shatters him.