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“Because I didn’t want you to choose me,” I bellowed, lunging off the bed. I stood on unsteady feet, practically swaying. My left leg jerked, a muscle spasming up my calf and into my knee. “Don’t you get it, Killian? I didn’t want a happily ever after with you. Not after what happened. Not after my sister… I couldn’t.”
Killian released a bitter laugh, filled with venom and sorrow. I swiped my tears away. “Marrying you was supposed to be my repentance.”
His body tensed, the muscles of his shoulders growing rigid. “That was where you went wrong. I’m not your atonement; I never was.” He shook his head, his jaw tight and dark eyes violent with rage. “It was always about self-loathing. I was right, you have a penchant for pain. You needed to somehow alleviate your guilt. So you thought the best way to hurt yourself, to destroy yourself was to marry the man you loved but have him hate you. Self-destruction.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” I choked, my hands shaking so bad I didn’t know how to stop my tremors. There was an insistent tingle growing inside my body. It slithered through my arms, burrowing into my chest and then down to my legs. My toes were starting to feel numb.
“If it’s sympathy you want, you won’t get it from me,” Killian said flatly, devoid of any humane emotions.
“Pity is the last thing I want from you,” I cried. My heart hammered in my chest and my body felt out of sorts, odd and detached. My emotions were in turmoil, but my brain didn’t seem to register them.
The warning signs were clear, but I was too slow at recognizing them. Too lost in this moment, in the madness in Killian’s eyes and the unmasked sorrow in his voice.
He advanced toward me, his steps slowed and measured, almost like he was trying to remain in control. “It’s ironic how you called me out on my rage; you said a lot of things about how I can’t deal with my issues, therefore I was taking them out on you. You fucking preached about how problematic I was. That I was the reason for my own unhappiness. But yet, we are so alike. Goddamn it. You’re self-destructing and bringing everyone else down with you,” Killian snarled. “You are no better, Julianna! Huh, how ironic, is that?”
My whole body flinched at the cruelty of his words, their hostility. I wanted to scream that none of it was true… that I wasn’t self-destructing. That he was wrong.
But it would just be another lie.
Killian read me like an open book and he clawed out all my insecurities, all my thoughts and ugly emotions. He tore apart my pages and forced me to bare myself completely open, before shoving my own words back into my face.
He saw me.
Like he did three years ago.
Killian saw the real Julianna.
The one who was tormented by the ghost of her sister. The one who succumbed to the disease that was guilt. Cursed with memories that were moored inside of me – my sister’s bloodied and mangled face. A soul that howled in despair, a resentment that had burrowed itself inside my bones and sorrow that was too heavy to carry.
Atonement was only an illusion that I was desperate to believe in.
With each step he took toward me, I moved back. But he quickly erased the distance between us, pushing me into the wall behind me. The room still smelled of sex and our arousal, but it was his scent that engulfed me. Musky and earthy.
“You were in that car with her, I get it. You watched your sister die, I get it. It was traumatic for you, I get it. You suffered physically and mentally, and you’re guilt-ridden, I. Fucking. Get. It. But that doesn’t give you the right to play with me and my feelings, to deceive me or to make me mourn the woman I loved when she wasn’t even dead!” His palm slapped over the wall beside my head and I flinched, hiccupping back a sob.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, so softly the words were barely audible.
Killian pulled away quickly, as if I had burned him with my words, with my apology.
I wished I could tell him just how sorry I was, but where to begin? The only thing I could mutter was a useless sorry.
“Did you even love me? Was anything that we had even real, Grace?” He shook his head, smiling bitterly. “Sorry, I mean… Julianna.”
“I didn’t fall in love with you,” I whispered. His dark eyes flared and his chest rattled with a shuddering breath. The torment on his face killed me. It shattered whatever was left of my already broken heart.
I dug my nail into my thighs, feeling the burn. The pain kept me grounded. “I plummeted into chaos because your love was everything beautiful and pure, but my love was everything deceitful and destructive. So, I didn’t just fall in love with you, Killian. I crawled, on my knees, bleeding for you. So, it was real. Every moment, every smile, every kiss… it was real and it hurt.”
