the impact of something beyond love, I can't help but compare the two.
The defining moment before you take your last breath, before your life becomes irrevocably different, not your own any longer. It becomes soft, pliable, forming to something bigger than who you are.
Heaven.
I often wonder if love gives us a glimpse of heaven. And I hope to God that's what Elliott, my brother, found.
This. Releasing her on a long chain, one that we share, this is living. It takes one to hold one; neither ever free.
This is suffering on earth—no one but her can be the cure to my insufferable disease.
She was gone. My ballerina girl came and went—all of her things sitting in that shipping store, waiting to be sent to another country, without me. In the fucking blink of an eye she was here and then gone. I had to steel myself against this, or the world was going to burn. All of the rage inside of me disguised itself as fuel to the fire, burning straight through my soul.
As she left in Mick’s truck, she had given me her profile. Her eyes were covered in the matching pair of glasses I had given to Elliott. Her hair blew around her face. Red tinted the darkness of the thick strands, plentiful streaks that caught the sunlight. I had never noticed before how much red she had in her hair. Suddenly, every inch of her seemed just as important as the next.
How much more hadn’t I noticed? How much more would I miss?
I sighed, applying extra pressure to the sensitive spot over my heart. Not for the first time I wondered if a heart attack was in the near future.
It was my own fault that I stood where I was, in the shadows of her life. The arrangement with her mother had come full circle, and it was time to pay my dues. My heart stood in that room, in an hourglass, blood instead of sand draining from my veins.
No, love was never easy. The fall was close to killing me.
I accepted this fate years ago. Though my plans went fucking awry. The path to hell is paved with good intentions. Yeah, that and then some.
Scarlett was the most graceful being I had ever encountered, but I never counted on her being so fierce once her mind was made up. A simple “I’ll come for you when the time is right” would never work for her. She had made plans, and hell if she wouldn’t see them through.
A teacher. Her. Stuck in this small town when her smile alone was too big for it.
After watching her dance in the window of her parents’ dance studio, I had walked the town from one end to another, and while I did vows were made. One of those vows was to never come between her and her career. She was too good for someone like me to take that from her. And no doubt, I would. It was in my nature. I was bred to seize and control—and when it came to mine, at all costs.
I had to stop myself from going after her, coming clean about the arrangement. I couldn’t risk it though. Not with the way she felt about everyone in her life attempting to control her. It was better to allow her to believe that this came down to me not believing that I was good enough for her. It was the lesser of the two evils.
I wasn’t good enough for her, though neither was anyone else. She was mine.
All I had in my control at the moment was hope. Hope that one day she’d understand why I had done this—for her own good and mine. We both had things to accomplish, and neither one of us would be able to do that with the other. The words were always on the tip of my tongue—your career comes first right now, I’m no good for you right now—but they never made their way to her. Nothing would have calmed the fire in her.
She was too young, much too young, for what I would demand of her. And I needed to do my part. Become a man she could be proud of—she was a woman above my status and I’d forever do better to keep step with her. She deserved that.
I’d suffer enough for the both of us until the time was right to claim what had always been mine—her.
“Suffering?” I could hear her voice in my ear. “Is