“Funny, the only thing all the memories of us do to me is fuel the never-ending hatred I have toward you.”
“You don’t mean that,” he states definitively.
I scoff, unbelieving of his audacity.
“You might think you do. But those feelings only serve as a reminder that you care. And I can live with that.” He takes a tentative step forward, but I find myself rooted in place.
“It doesn’t matter if you hate me. Gods, Kallie, fucking loathe my presence, hate the way I smell, breathe, talk. I don’t care, because as long as you’re feelingsomething,I’ll be here waiting for you when you’re ready.” Callum’s steps halt once he’s onlya few feet from me. “You are the light at the end of all of this, Kallie. You are the reason I keep going and don’t let the pain consume me.” He rushes toward me, eating up the little distance that separates us, like he couldn’t bear it any longer to not be near me.
Both his hands grab the sides of my face, and he stares deeply into my eyes—my soul. I wonder if he can read my mind, but with a quick check, I’m at ease when I see the wall is perfectly intact.
“I hate you,” I whisper through clenched teeth. And his thumb casually swipes across my cheek, wiping away the tears I can’t hold back any longer.
“I love you.”
It doesn’t matter how many tears fall; he catches each one without a word.
I try to push him away, palms open on his chest, but he doesn’t budge. “I hate you.” I push harder, but still nothing. “I hate you. I hate you. I fucking hate you!” My fists close, and I pound on his chest, over and over again, and he lets me, still with his hands pressed to the sides of my face, catching the tears pouring down in streams.
“Why? Why would you do this to me? Why would you leave me? Do the things you did?” I’m shaking now, not from rage but from the hollowed-out ache. And still, he holds me like I’m something fragile. Something worth saving. “I gave youeverythingI had! And what did I get in return? Pain, Callum. On a silver platter. All those nights I wanted to die. Why wouldn’t you just let me? Youbrokeme. Do you understand that? You took a fucking sledgehammer to my being and left me there to glue the jagged pieces back together!”
“I’m so sorry—”
“Screw you and your apologies! Sorry isn’t going to fix what you broke! It isn’t good enough!” I punctuate the last fewwords with brutal hits to his chest, but the power behind them diminishes, along with any remaining energy I had. My forehead meets his chest with exhaustion, and he cups the back of my head with one hand and pulls me into him with the other arm wrapped around my back.
He lets me cry into his embrace, soothing me with each stroke he passes over my hair. In this moment in time, it doesn’t matter that all the things he did weren’t of his choosing. To my brain, it was him. It wasCallumwho left me in that cell, withering away, day after day. It wasCallumwho took me in to get tortured, poked, and prodded. Even if it wasn’t, my brain won’t let me forget it was his face that forced me into a life I never asked for.
Pulling away, he doesn’t let me go far. Instead, his hands reclaim their spots on my cheeks, tilting my head up and holding it in place. His eyes say so many things that his mouth refuses to. Against my better judgment, I attempt to see what he’s thinking, feeling, but when I do, my consciousness is met with a steel wall, hard and impenetrable. Disappointment coils through me like an old friend, causing my stomach to sink and my limbs to go numb.
“Why, after all that you’ve done to me, do I still feel a pull toward you?” My voice is barely a whisper. “It doesn’t matter how much I hate you. I’m sucked into your magnetic orbit. No matter how much I beg to sever the connection.”
“The stars have a wicked sense of humor.” But the smile he offers doesn’t reach his eyes.
“How can I possibly trust you again?”
“I’m not asking you to. I just need you to believe me.”
I want to. Gods, do I want to, but it’s not that simple. Our eyes speak the words our mouths refuse to voice, and that pang in my chest returns when I see the man from before—before the betrayal—the person I loathed for completely different reasons, and my heart aches to feel the way I did.
Loved, cherished, and like I was the only person who saw the stars the same way he did. Right now, my mind is playing tricks, trying to convince me that’s who is standing in front of me.
But those feelings and memories get mudded with the brutality of his most recent actions.
I pull back, ripping myself from his hold, and create some much-needed space. His arms slowly fall to his sides, and the clench of his jaw does little to hide the pained expression threatening to surface. “Believe you? Callum, be so fucking for real.”
“Don’t you think it hurts me to ask you for anything? If there was any other way, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
My mouth drops in shock. “Oh, my fuck. It hurtsyou?Does it Callum? Well, letmetellyouwhatreallyhurts.” He opens his mouth to speak, but I cut him off. “Hurt is what I felt when I woke up in that cage. Betrayal is what I felt once I realized you were sentencing me to death. Agonizing, soul-crushing pain is what coursed through my body when you walked out that door andcontinuedto come back and take me to that fucking torture chamber!”
“I never walked out,” he says with full conviction, bypassing everything else I said.
My brows pull together. “What?”
“You said, ‘I swear to the fucking Goddess, if you walk out that door and throw away everything, that’s it.’” He strides over, but I don’t fall for it. Instead, I keep the comforting distance, processing and trying to remember for myself if he’s right. “I never walked out that door,” he reiterates.
The memory is cloudy, buried beneath months of torment I tried to lock away for good. But when the smoke clears and the fog lifts, it plays for me in perfect focus. And I hate that he’s right. Shadows consume him, and he just…vanishes. “You knew what I meant.”
“Doesn’t matter. Even then, a part of me knew we would find each other again. And that small moment in time, a play on words, is all I needed to know there was still hope.”
