“You won’t be able to stop me for long.”
My jaw locks tight. “Let’s see if I can or can’t,” I bite out, yanking her bottoms down.
“What are you doing?” she shouts, shoving against my chest with her free hand. Her wounded hand is in my grip. She tries to yank it free but fails.
I move my hand inside her panties, my fingers stopping just above her folds. Tears spill from her eyes. Anger, hurt, disgust—every wrong thing fills her reddened brown eyes. The sight of her like this claws at my gut. The pain splinters through every vein, until there’s nothing left but rage and agony twisted into something I can’t control. It’s pushing me right to the edge.
I crash my lips onto hers. She doesn’t kiss me back, she bites. Her teeth sink into my lower lip, and I taste copper andsalt. The taste of her hatred. She claws at my face, nails raking furrows into my skin. I know she wants to tear me apart. She would, if she had the strength. I wish she did. I wish she could rip me open. I would cherish that pain. I’d cherish any pain she gives me—the stronger, the better. Just stop this one. This one in my chest.It’s fucking killing me.
I release her lips but don’t move away, staring into her hatred-filled eyes. Every second I spend looking into them drives the shard deeper inside me. I pull my hand out of her panties.
“What’s this drama for, huh? You don’t want your husband to touch you, when not very long ago you couldn’t get enough of it?”
“I hate you, you monster,” she cries out. “I loathe your touch. You and everything about you disgust me. I want to rip off every inch of my skin that you’ve touched. I hate my body because you used it. I fucking hate you.”
I release her completely and move away. She hugs her knees, burying her face in them, wailing. The day she cut her wrist, I saw her skin scrubbed raw. What I didn’t know then was that it was because I touched her.
“Did you cut your wrist because you hated yourself… because I touched you?” The words scrape past my throat like glass, and I taste blood at the back of my tongue.
She lifts her head, her face red and wet with tears. The eyes that made me love life are shouting at me that I was never worthy of that life. I’m the most disgusting thing she has ever seen.
“Yes. I wanted to kill myself because I was disgusted with myself. You used me like your fucking whore, ruined me for the man I love, using his name. I am disgusted by you and by the body you touched.” She hurls the words at me, each one a blade tearing through my soul.
I stare at her for one more minute, memorizing the wreckage on her face, then turn.
I walk out of the room. Her words keep looping in my head, shaking my whole body. I leave the house and sink onto the steps outside as the door shuts behind me.
My hands tremble as I stare at them through the blur of tears in my eyes. Drops fall onto them, and the shaking worsens.
She hates her body because I touched her.
Am I that disgusting? I must be.
After all, I lied to touch her. Used the man I ruined her for.
Chapter 27
Elowen
He doesn’t come inside, even after midnight.
One more hour passes.
Another does.
I keep staring at the ceiling, lost in the worst place in the world: my head.
When he still hasn’t come inside by three in the morning, I leave the room. Maybe he’s finally decided to set me free.
Who am I kidding? I know he’s outside, smoking. He’s been there for the past three hours.
The house reeks of smoke and alcohol. I enter the living room, where the smell is suffocatingly thick.
He isn’t on the couches. I walk around the longest sofa, and there he is, sitting on the floor, empty plastic alcohol bottles and burnt cigarette butts scattered all around him.
“Have you planned to kill yourself tonight?” I don’t know why I’m so angry at him. I shouldn’t care whether he lives or dies. If anything, his death would be good news for me.
He drags his eyes up to me. His eyes look like those of a dead man—soulless. Two pits of nothing. Now I realize that in the past few days, when his face was expressionless, his eyes weren’t. They belonged to a living man, a hopeful one. Now they’re entirely hopeless.
