The pain inside of him was like a living thing. It had teeth. Monstrous teeth.
He was undone. He was finished. Because if he didn’t have Heather, what did he have?
It was like years’ and years’ worth of pain was pushing forward now. It was like all of the feelings that he had ever withheld from himself were crashing in on him now.
Years of it.
Why was his mother not like other mothers?
Why did his father care more about her, and then his new wife? His new stepdaughter? Why never him?
Why did he always have to work to have love? Why did he always have to give? Until he had nothing left. Nothing for his father, who he had shut out, and then there was her.
Then there was her.
He could remember when she had first appeared, and it was like a demon had risen up inside of him and told him that he had no choice but to deny her. He had to.
And then, when he was seventeen, it had become clear why.
Her beauty intoxicated him. His desire for her surpassed any desire he had ever felt for any other woman. And it made him mean. It made him want to lash out at her. It made him want to push her away.
Because she was the key to unlocking the door that he kept so carefully locked.
The one that kept him from being his father or his mother.
The one that kept him safe.
Always.
He gazed around the room, at all the destruction.
He had torn apart the bed. He had put holes in the wall.
He was like an animal. He had always known he would be.
Confirmed when he had first seen Heather with that other man.
Oh God. It had been confirmed then. Because he had been tempted to rip that fool’s head off. He was lucky that he hadn’t.
So very lucky.
He had been fighting this all those years. That his feelings for her were too strong. That they were…
That they were in love. And for him that was toxic, and it always would be.
She wanted them to have everything? He couldn’t have everything. He couldn’t.
And how did she leave him? How dare she. When he had been trying to save her.
You were trying to save yourself.
Maybe.
But he feared the alternative would be to drown.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
She didn’t goto New York. Instead, she went to London. She went to Catherine.
