and wanted to hurt me, it was only because I betrayed him and made him feel powerless. But he never stopped loving me.
There is always a fine line between love and hatred. The more we love a person, the more we can hate them when they do us wrong.
I’ve done Phoenix so wrong that I don’t deserve him.
And yet, he’s here, comforting me in my own bed as we try to make amends with each other.
It’s only fair if I do my part, too.
So I turn to him and make him look at me, so he’ll know I mean it. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For doing that. What you just did.”
“I did something unspeakable,” he says.
“But you did it for me. To take the bad memories away.” I press a kiss on his lips, firmly setting my love for him in his heart. And as I take a short breath between our kisses, I repeat, “Thank you.”
CHAPTER 28
VANESSA
I wake up in the middle of the night. I don’t know how long I’ve slept, but gazing at the clock on the wall, I see it’s been a very long time, and it scares me. Was I that tired? I must’ve been to have slept the entire day and night.
When I look beside me, Phoenix is lying next to me, his arms partially wrapped around my waist. His dark hair messily falls down his face, covering the piercing in his eyebrow. For a second, I just look at him, admiring the view. He looks beautiful in this quiet bedroom … when he’s not trying to kill me.
I think back on tonight, of the moment he came into the room and fucked me raw. It was emotionally draining, to say the least. Tears still stain my cheeks, and when I feel my own skin, it’s still red and swollen from the fights. He choked me to erase the memories I had. Should I be happy or should I be mad? Only now that I’m fully awake do I grasp what he did, and it creates a lump in my throat that I just can’t seem to swallow down.
It’s so wrong. What I feel for him. What he does to me. What we put each other through.
This isn’t what I had imagined for myself, for my future. For us.
And watching him lie there in my bed as if we’re some kind of happy couple scares the shit out of me.
I gently crawl out, making sure he doesn’t wake up as I get out of bed. My naked body is the first thing I cover up with a robe I fish from my closet, and then I look at my broken image in the mirror. The woman who used to be something, a star, someone they loved. Now she’s a tearstained fading beauty, losing her cool blond hair, old mascara staining her eyes.
I grab a pad and put some lotion on it, gently dabbing it on my painful skin. Everything hurts. Not just my body, but my heart. My soul. What’s left of me is a muddy mess of broken pieces. And it’s all because of him.
He did this. All of it. In the name of justice. Was it worth it? Did he get what he want? And more importantly, did I get what I wanted when I decided to ruin my own life?
Miserable. That’s what I am. Pathetic.
And I can’t stand that I’ve become this way. All because of him.
I glance over my shoulder at the naked, muscular body hiding underneath a thin strip of blanket. He doesn’t even know what I really feel, what I really think, when I see him, when I see myself. All I see is dirty, disgusting people. And I don’t want to be that way anymore.
But how is that even possible when I’m still near him?
How can we change ourselves if we are who we are because of each other?
It makes me hate him so much more.
But I hate myself even more for loving him.
I get up and roam around the room, searching through all the cabinets and even his clothes. I find what I’m looking for inside his wallet, right beside a picture of me when I was only sixteen. God, I looked so different back then. Still innocent. Still untainted.
I take the key from his wallet and throw the wallet back on the sheets. Using my mouth, I pry it into the cuffs and turn. Just a click and the cuffs open up. My heart flutters a little