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“What?”
I notice him making fists inside his pockets.
The vein on the side of his neck pulsing.
Then, “I wanted to put a baby in you so I could tie you to me. So I could keep you. So no one — not even me — could’ve torn us apart. After two years of keeping you away and denying myself what I really wanted — you — I got so crazy, I got so blinded by that primal need that I didn’t think about you even for a single second. I didn’t think about what you wanted or how my reckless need would affect your life, I just… I just wanted you. Wanted to show the world that you were mine. That you belonged to me. I wanted to make it so that you could never leave me. Like the rest of them.
“And then a year later, you asked me to do the same thing and Jesus Christ, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. I thought all my dreams had come true and I kept telling myself that it was only for you. That it wasn’t for me. I didn’t deserve to feel any happiness over this and I couldn’t be selfish. But I was, wasn’t I? I tricked you into marrying me. I told myself that it was because I needed to calm my anger, my jealousy. I told myself that it was my need to protect you. And while that may have been true, the real reason again was me. It was because that was what I wanted. I’d already put a baby in you, two babies, and I just… I couldn’t go another day without making sure that you were mine. Completely and irrevocably and permanently.
“And again, it gets worse, doesn’t it? Because of what I did on the day of your wedding. I knew, I fucking knew, that it wasn’t your choice, marrying him. That you were being forced by your father and that there must’ve been a motherfucking good reason as to why you were ready to sacrifice your own life. And I’d come to rescue you, I swear to God. I swear to fucking God that was my intention but I… I saw you in that wedding dress, looking like a dream, looking so beautiful that it fucking broke my heart just to look at you, that I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t stop this rush of possessiveness, this hot rush of anger, and again, I fucked you over.
“So the reason I left, Tempest, something that I promised myself that I’d never do, was because you were right. Because for the longest time I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know why I did the things that I did. But I do now. I figured it out. I finally fucking figured it out. It’s because I love you.”
So this is the bomb.
And it drops.
And I explode. I die.
I’m killed in this moment.
Murdered. Annihilated and destroyed.
“I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you and wanted to protect you,” he rasps. “And I will love you until the moment my heart stops beating. But unfortunately, that doesn’t bode well for you. Because imagine being loved by someone like me. Imagine being loved by a man who’s so broken on the inside that ever since I saw you, I’ve been hurting you. That I’ve been making you cry and bleeding you dry. Imagine being loved by someone whose insides are snarled and twisted up like a coarse rope or a barbed wire. Whose heart is a ticking time bomb. Whose soul is made of thorns and thunder. Imagine being loved by someone who’s so controlled by his fears, his issues that,” he swallows, “he can never make you happy. I can never make the girl I love happy. The girl who’s my one true family. Because you’re that, Tempest. I’ve been afraid to say it. I’ve been afraid to even think it, given how broken my family has always been but… You’ve been the truest family that I’ve known. You stood by me and had my back when you didn’t have to. When you shouldn’t have at all, and I… I hurt you and abused you and traumatized you exactly like my father did to my mother, to us. And so leaving you was the only good thing I could do for you. Because my love isn’t the stuff of romance novels. It isn’t the stuff of dreams. It’s what tragedies are made of. It’s what they talk about when they talk about cautionary tales. To survive my love is to survive a war. To love me is to destroy your peace. And the only way I could make sure that you didn’t have to was to leave. Staying away from you is the only way I can love you and keep you safe at the same time.”
