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"Autumn, please," he whispers, stepping closer, his appeal wrapped in velvet tones. Still, the menace is there, lurking beneath the surface.
"Stay back!" I snap, my voice slicing through the tension, my own resolve hardening like ice. "I trusted you!"
The air between us crackles, charged with an electric current of unsaid truths. He reaches out, but I recoil, repulsed by the touch of the hand that held a camera instead of mine.
"Explain yourself." I demand strength surging in my veins. A fire ignites within me, scorching away the remnants of vulnerability. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't scream right now."
Brennan hesitates, his armor of invincibility cracking, revealing the fragile boy beneath the brawn. But I'm past caring about the why, the how, the who he might really be.
"Autumn, I—I didn't mean for it to go this far," he stammers, a pathetic excuse hanging limp in the charged air.
"Mean for it to go this far?" I echo, incredulous, my voice climbing with each syllable. "You stalked me, Brennan!"
My heart thunders against my ribcage, a defiant drum rallying to the cause of my wounded soul.
"Autumn, I love you," he says, but the phrase is tainted, corrupted by the shadows of his sins.
Tears flood my eyes. I'm losing it, and I can't bear to break down in front of him.
So, I turn on my heel.
"Please, Autumn—" he begins, but I ignore him.
I slam the door behind me, the sound echoing like a shot through the silence of Brennan's house. My feet pound against the floorboards, each step heavier than the last, as if I'm trying tostomp out the images burned into my retinas–me, unknowingly the subject of Brennan's twisted gallery.
Mascara stains streak down my cheeks, hot and shameful. The cool air outside slaps against my skin, a welcome assault compared to the stifling betrayal that lingers in his room. I should be sobbing, wailing even, but there's only this deep, hollow ache where my heart used to trust freely.
The night wraps around me, a dark shroud for the funeral of my innocence. Streetlights flicker overhead, casting shadows that play at the edges of my vision. Paranoia creeps along my spine, every rustle of leaves a potential threat, every distant footstep a ghostly echo of Brennan's obsession.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, a viper with its incessant vibration. I don't need to look. I know it's him. Apologies, excuses, declarations–they're all just words, empty and void of meaning now. I toss the device away, hearing it crash somewhere in the distance.
There's a taste of iron on my tongue, blood bitten back from saying too much or perhaps not enough. I wrap my arms around myself, but it's no use. I can't stop the hurt. I thought I'd finally found something beautiful, but it's not. It's twisted and wrong.
"Fuck you, Brennan," I whisper into the void, a prayer to no god that would listen. My footsteps quicken, a frenzied beat against the pavement, an escape rhythm that promises liberation with every block put between us.
The tears fall hot and heavy now as my entire being already misses him and begs for me to turn around and go back into his arms.
My heart is broken.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Brennan
I'm alonein my room, the silence stifling, heavy like a weight on my chest. The pictures of Autumn are scattered haphazardly across my bed, each one a shard of the beautiful mirror she held up to my life—now shattered. My gaze fixates on her image, the curve of her cheek, the fall of her hair. It's exquisite agony. She's everything, and I ache with the empty space where she used to be.
The dim light from my bedside lamp casts shadows that play along the walls, as if mocking the darkness gnawing at the edges of my soul. I miss her so damn much it's a physical pain, sharp and relentless. My hands shake as I pick up another photo, her eyes looking right through me, unknowing, unseeing. How did I become this person, lurking in the periphery of someone else's life, desperate for a glance, a moment?
Clenched fists rest on my thighs, knuckles white, as if by sheer force I could crush the longing out of my being. I can’t stand the man I've become—a stalker, a shadow, a silent watcher obsessed with a girl who deserves the sun. But fuck, Iloveher.Love her with a ferocity that frightens me, consumes me, drives me to madness.
My brow furrows, a dull headache forming at the temples as I grapple with the war inside. A tempest rages, love battling obsession. It's a twisted dance, an ache that pulses with every heartbeat, every ragged breath. I need to make things right with her, need to show her that beneath this messed-up exterior beats a heart that cares, truly cares, not just craves.
"Autumn," I whisper to the stillness, her name a sacred mantra on my lips, a plea for redemption. Desire coils tight within me, dark and insistent, but it's tangled with the genuine warmth that once lit me up from the inside whenever she smiled my way. I have to prove that I'm more than this desire, this darkness. I need to peel back the layers of this obsession and find the man worthy of her light.
It's a razor's edge I walk, teetering between salvation and ruin, and all I want is to be the hero she needs, not the villain in her story. But how do you save someone from yourself? How do you extinguish the blaze of a wildfire passion that threatens to consume everything in its path?
"Autumn," I say again, the word a vow, a promise. I will do whatever it takes to earn her forgiveness, to restore the trust I've shattered.
