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He’d left her alone standing on the side of a road and never returned, and god a part of her hated him so much for it.
She closed the distance between them, pushing against his chest. “You left me.” She hated the way her jaw trembled as memories she’d been keeping at bay flooded her in her vulnerable state. “You forgot me,” she whispered, unable to keep it in any longer. The secret had become poison in her veins, corroding her from the inside as she tried to protect him.
The unscarred side of his face frowned, his gaze sharpening on her. “I didn’t forget you.”
“You did.” Her eyes flitted to his throat as hers tightened. “And you don’t even know it.”
His hand came to her chin, drawing her eyes to see a fierce look on his face as he tried to understand what she meant. He wouldn’t get it. He'd never get it.
And suddenly, she felt so completely exhausted. He pulled and pushed and pulled and pushed and she was drained. She didn’t have anything left to give anymore.
She slumped, her head coming to rest on his chest. She should probably care that they were covered in someone’s blood but she just couldn’t bring herself to be bothered. She could feel her heart plummeting, her emotions going on another downward spiral of the ugly, and all she wanted was to go home and sleep and not move until she felt better. But she didn’t know where she could sleep—her room in the mansion was unsettling alone, the couch hurt and he didn’t want her in his bed.
Everything crashed on her.
What had she been thinking?
That was the thing, she hadn’t been. She’d been feeling, and she’d made her decisions from her heart and not her head. He didn’t remember her because of whatever injury had taken his eye, and it seemed he would never remember. But she’d been hoping, somewhere deep down, that maybe spending time together would trigger some emotional response in him, not taking into consideration the fact that he’d spent the last ten years not wanting to feel. And she could tell him about their history, but what was the point? He was sexually attracted to her, he felt territorial about her, but that didn’t equate any emotional attachment. For him, putting distance between them was easy. He had no issues detaching because he wasn’t attached in the first place. He’d taken her to a new city and left her alone, taken her to his house and abandoned her for days. And had she not come here to find him, he probably would have spent the entire duration of the rest of their marriage away, her chasing him.
God, she was a fool. An overemotional fool who attached herself too easily to hope.
A tear fell down her cheek and onto his shoulder.
Her mother had been right. It was a farce of a marriage.
She inhaled, taking a deep breath of his scent, committing it to memory before pulling away, physically and mentally. She needed to stop chasing. She needed to leave, to regroup, to undo the mess she’d made of both their lives.
This had been a mistake. A well-intended, lovelorn mistake but an error nonetheless.
She took a step away and felt his eye on her for a long minute, his thumb tracing the tear on her cheek.
“What just happened?” he asked softly and she avoided looking at him, straightening her clothes.
“I have to go,” she told him, breaking his grip and heading for the door, needing space from him.
His hand on her arm stopped her. “What just happened?” he asked again, and she took another deep breath in, not knowing how to answer him. So she didn’t. Their communication sucked anyway. She pulled out of his loose grip and opened the door.
Victor was standing guard outside, keeping anyone from coming their way.
“Can you hand me your jacket please?” she asked him, feeling dirty and miserable, and truly degraded for the first time in her life.
Victor wordlessly shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to her, his eyes averted to the man she could feel at her back. She could feel his singular gaze piercing her, and she ignored it. Wrapping the jacket around herself as Victor handed her the bag she’d left on the chair, she stepped away. She took the bag and kept her head down, walking out of the warehouse and into the dark parking lot. Her breaths shook. She got in the car and Victor got in to drive.
“Home?” he asked, starting the ignition, and no she didn’t want to go home because it didn’t feel like her home. She didn’t feel like she belonged, not in a place she’d thrown her heart again and again, only for it to be rebuffed.
“I’d like to go to my sister’s apartment please.”
She saw Victor’s eyes in the rearview mirror, but he held his tongue and drove into the night.
Zephyr stared out the window, leaning her head against the glass, trying to sieve her thoughts and understand what she was feeling, the overwrought jumble of emotions inside her confusing. A part of her still wanted to return and fight for them, the part that had been fascinated by him at ten, fallen in love with him at eighteen, and found him again now. That part wanted to jump into his arms like she had that first night at the fight, and that part wanted her to stay in the hope that she could maybe make him love her too.
But another part, a darker part mocked the girl with the love and taunted the hope. It told her she was a fool for thinking it could be possible, an idiot for trying, and she’d done nothing but set herself up for more hurt over the last months. While he might not intentionally hurt her, he had the power to break her. She remembered the feeling when he’d left her alone in Tenebrae, when he’d told his brother it wasn’t a ‘real marriage’, when he’d taken her to his house and left her completely alone in a new place.
One step forward, ten steps back. And she was just… done.
The car came to a stop in front of her old apartment building, and she got out, dragging herself to the door. She entered the code and turned to Victor who’d escorted her to the point.
“I’ll be staying with my sister,” she told him, still clutching his jacket. “I don’t have work tomorrow, so you don’t have to be here. I’ll get your jacket cleaned and return it.”
Victor gave her a concerned look. “Send me a text if you need me.”
She gave him a small smile and entered the building, closing the door behind her. By memory, she ended up in front of her old apartment and rang the bell. It was a late weekend night, and usually Zen stayed up on those, binging some crime show.
The door swung open to reveal her surprised sister, who took one look at her and pulled her in. “Oh, Zee.”
Zephyr burst out crying.
