AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The words are beautiful enough that my traitorous heart melts for him even as it bleeds with the gaping wound he left.
“You could’ve been…you were, but—”
“Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve,” he states, cutting me off as he rolls his forehead over my hair. “I could’ve done things differently, and if I knew then what I know now, I would’ve. I should’ve known better than to push you away, but when you’re me, it’s hard to trust people.”
“When you’re me and you’ve lost everyone you’ve ever loved, it’s hard to open yourself up to anyone.” Tears prickle my eyes as I admit, “But I let you in, and I allowed myself to fall in love with you.” Cupping his face with my hand, I pull away so that I can look into his eyes. “I loved you, and you left me. Cast me away like I was nothing to you. The saddest part of it is that I still loved you then.”
I still love him now, but if he can’t trust, then we’re going to end up here, like this, again. That’s something that I can’t do.
“I can’t fight you, Henry. I don’t have the physical strength to go at it with you and come out on top. But if there’s a single part of you that honestly cares for me, you’ll let me go.”
“No,” he says as I release him and try to push myself away again. “I love you.”
A deluge of tears breaks free at his words. I’ve wanted to hear them so much, and I imagined him telling me he loves me so many times. But not once was I incapacitated because he’d drugged me. Nor had he considered killing me hours beforehand. Not one of those times was I wondering what kind of person I am for loving him in spite of knowing that he’s a killer. A murderer. A monster.
“Then prove it,” I sob. “Let me go home. Just… Let. Me. Go. Please, Henry.”
With a nod, he sits me beside him on the bed before he gets up and strides to the door. His demeanour is a myriad of emotions that wrench at my insides. One look and I feel the full spectrum of love and grief and hate. He makes me feel so much so fiercely, and I don’t like it. I wish I could make it stop. I wish I could make it all go away. For once, I wish my veins would bleed dry of this pain.
“Look at me, Eve,” he orders brusquely. As always, my body bows to his will, and my stare meets his across the dimly lit room. “I’m not giving you up. This isn’t me letting you go.” Henry opens the door and stands in the open doorway, watching me intently.
It’s impossible to breathe through the merciless squeeze of my chest around my lungs. My vision is hazy from my tears, and my head is throbbing from the sedative he gave me. I’m overwhelmed and exhausted. My wits are at their end.
I am terrified; the longer I look at him like this, the more I love him. The more I love him, the scarier it becomes to think of what I would do to be with him. Who I would become to be his. If behind every great man, there’s a great woman, what would it make me to be behind this man? A killer? A monster?
“Listen to me, Eve,” Henry barks across the room when I stare down at my hands, wondering what they would look like bloody like his. When I meet his gaze again, he tells me, “I’m not letting you leave me. At least not for good. I’ll give you time and space, but I’m always going to be right there, watching over you. Keeping you safe.”
“Henry…”
“Percival will see you home.” Without another word, he backs out of the room, closing the door as he leaves.
I’ve never felt so conflicted and so alone as I do now. Taking another long drink of water, I focus on the feel of cool liquid down my throat and chest to my belly. My autonomy is returning to me slowly as I fall back on the mattress and trace the intricate plasterwork on the ceiling with my eyes until I can’t keep them open anymore, and I doze off with my sadness pulsing all over me.
I made my bed. Now I’m lying in it.
* * *
The first rose is waiting for me by my front door when Percival takes me home. The estate is unusually quiet as I pick up the short, odd-shaped vase beside the dinosaur boot scraper George bought for my birthday last year. The bud is a deep burgundy red with just one leaf on the trimmed stem, leaving it long enough to tie a small envelope to it.
“Darling” is inscribed on the front of the velvet-coated card stock in a gold script that is all too familiar. And I don’t know whether my heart is smiling or crying at the sight of it. This strange haze has come over me since the moment I stepped out of the red suite.
Desiderium: that awful hollowness and longing for something that’s missing. I feel lost as my feet try to navigate the shaky ground I’ve found myself on without him.
When I’m in my flat, I put the small vase on the dining table before I make myself a cup of tea and then sit in front of the note. I watch it for a while, wondering what it could say that I don’t already know. Henry made it clear that he’s not simply going to allow me to walk away.
Like Julian told me the night I signed the contract—I made a deal with the devil. I just never imagined falling for him, loving him despite all his sins. Unable to stare at the envelope anymore, I open it haphazardly with my finger, almost giving myself a papercut that would only make everything worse.
I draw a deep breath into my lungs as I read over the card.
And the reasons I love you are endless…
The black scroll reads on the front of the card, as though it’s part of an unfinished conversation. Perhaps that’s what we’ll always be—an unfinished, unpunctuated ramble of words that never ends. There’ll always be more to say and more to feel. I flip the card, and my eyes flit to the red wax seal beneath the writing on it.
The head of the wolf is like an imprint of his ring. A stamp of everything he is. Beautiful and beastly. Majestic and deadly. Somehow, contrary to everything I’ve ever thought of myself, I’m addicted to him, love and hate interwoven into a poison that has darkened my soul. Still, I love him. I think I’ll always love him because beneath everything I know he’s capable of and that he has done, I’ve felt his gentleness and adoration. And maybe it’s better to be worshipped by a devil than loved by a god.
My tear-glazed eyes flit to the message about Henry’s seal. It’s everything I already know. I’ve known for so long, but seeing it in his writing makes it more than real or true. It makes it a testament. A prophecy fate long wrote about us thousands of lives ago.
You touched my soul and made it yours.
