Page 140 of The Luna Duet

Not anymore.

I would’ve shoved her against the door and stuck my tongue down her throat, doing my best to replace that bastard’s spit with my own, proving to her that a kiss from him was nothing compared to a kiss from me.

But she never came.

She hadn’t visited me in the fourteen torturous months she was his.

And the morning I caught her popping a contraceptive pill before going out on The Fluke as a family, I’d known she was letting him inside her. He was coming inside her. He was touching her and kissing her and driving his fucking cock between her legs and—

Fuck, stop.

I’d hoped, after a year, that I would’ve begun the climb out of this sea of depression. That I could finally grab onto the shards of happiness that she’d once given me. She’d been my light while I floundered in the grief of losing my family. She’d been my smiles and laughter and hope.

And without her?

I forgot how to do any of that.

I acted around the Taylors.

I made sure to pull my weight and bent over backward for what they wanted, but my heart was dead. A useless piece of meat inside me, rotten and unwanted.

There was nothing for me here.

There was nothing for me back home.

I couldn’t stay, but I couldn’t go.

I was trapped and lost and hurting and so fucking sad that eventually, I would suffocate.

I longed for that day.

The day when I could just give in, give up, let go.

I fantasised about sinking beneath the waves that’d stolen everything and never coming back up.

And I hated myself because I wasn’t that weak.

I wasn’t supposed to be this way.

My father would have cuffed me around the head for a single notion of not coping.

But that was what Neri had done to me.

That was what not dealing with four years of grief had done.

That was what being stranded on a land that wasn’t mine, existing with people who weren’t mine, and longing after a life that could never be mine had done.

I supposed a therapist would call me depressed.

They’d say I’d reached critical burnout from refusing to deal with my past.

But...what was the fucking point?

How was I supposed to be happy when I was one phone call away from being deported and killed? How was I supposed to find joy when my dead heart remained so stubbornly loyal to those it’d lost? How was I supposed to chase after what I wanted, to build a life I desperately needed when it could all be taken away so easily?

Neri had no idea, but I’d installed a hook-up app on the phone she’d given me, desperate to find relief. The first few times the app matched me with someone, my chest tightened with hope that perhaps this time, I might be man enough to lose my virginity.

I might be lucky enough to find comfort in the arms of a total stranger.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com