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I slowly nod. “I was blinded by hatred, and it was wrong.”
None of it was right, and I know that now. I only pretended it was so I could feel good about what I was doing. So I could ignore the feelings I had for her growing underneath the surface of my monstrous skin. That same skin that bears the scars of all these sins I committed just to punish others for theirs.
I am no better than any of them.
“I’m sorry …” I say. “And I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
“Good, because I won’t,” she claps back, and she turns her head away from me, sealing the deal.
I look away too as tears well up in my eyes. The very thing I wished to avoid still happened.
She hates me.
She hates me as much as my mother hated my father.
Her lips part. “What are you going to do with Tiffany?”
“Tiffany?” I’m surprised she’d ask about her. “I wanted to punish her for her sin.”
“You already have.” Her words are as stark as her face. “Just like the other women.”
I frown, confused as to why she would care so much, especially about the woman who hurt her so badly. “Don’t you want to see her punished? You hate the woman.”
Her face contorts. “I hate her with all my guts. But there’s been enough pain already. Let her go.”
I swallow. “I—”
“I don’t want to hear any more excuses,” she interjects. “Let. Everyone. Go.”
I’m amazed. She’s asked it so many times before, and I continued to say no, yet she never stops. But more importantly, she doesn’t want anyone else to get hurt. Not even the woman who deserves it the most.
I sigh out loud and tap my foot as I stare at the wall. Maybe there is a way for me to make amends. A way to fix everything I’ve broken. A way to … make her somewhat happy again.
It will cost me everything.
For a long time, I wasn’t willing to pay the price.
I am now.
There is nothing left for me to gain.
Not when Amelia hates me so much she can’t stomach the sight of me.
“I know you can’t do it. So consider us over,” she says. “I don’t want anything to do with you anymore.”
Her words cut me more than any knife ever could.
I know I’ve lost her love.
I knew it since the moment I took her down to the basement.
But she needed to know the whole truth and the extent of my lies …
I just pray she will find it in her heart to forgive me one day.
I close my eyes for a second and take a deep breath. There are only two other things that must be done. “I won’t ask you to do it for me, but please do it for you. Please, let my doctor check you out and make sure you’re okay.”
She only sighs loudly. “Fine.”
Her answer is crude, but it tempers the storm razing my heart momentarily.
I nod and get up from the seat. “I … I’ll go get her.”
I walk toward the door, pausing with my hand resting on the handle. “I still want to say this to you. I will never, ever take back this truth: I care deeply about you. From the moment we first met, I knew that we would meet again. You were too special. Too perfect. And when I finally found you …” I grunt, clenching my fist at the thought of all the things I wish to say. “Every single second of the day I spend thinking about you and all the beautiful faces you make, about all the pain you’ve been through that made you as resilient as you are now, and about how much of a good woman you really are. And that I do not deserve you. No matter how much I degraded you, no matter how much I tried to climb up that ladder of justice, I could never get even an inch closer to the saint that you are.”
She stares up at me, her eyes big, confusion settling in.
“And the longer I spend staring at you, the more I realize how grave the error of my ways. Because I see the pain I inflicted in you now. I am the devil who clipped the angel’s wings.”
Amelia
Even as he’s long disappeared through the door, I can’t help but stare at it, wondering when he’d come back or if he’d come back at all. But more importantly, because I wanted him to stay. I wanted him to tell me all the things he had never said to me before, about the beauty underneath all this pain I’ve suffered, about the ways that I remind him of all the good in the world. I wanted him to fight. I wanted him to beg.
I wanted him to feel just an inkling of everything I have since the moment he took me. Since the moment I began to fall.
