Because I know it’s just an illusion.
My gaze drifts to the window, and I move back to double check that the gun is loaded before I settle in for another long night.
6
LIAM
Terrified eyes stare up at me.
Tears stream down her temples.
Her voice cracks as she begs for me to stop, but I don’t.
I can’t.
My hands tighten around her throat as rage courses through me.
Heating my blood.
Tightening my skin.
Blurring my vision until I can barely see the woman beneath me.
Her fingernails claw at my hands and wrists, trying to get me to release my hold, but I’m lost to it now.
The darkness.
The need to end her, to pay her back for what she’s done to me.
This bitch is as good as dead.
Only, I’m not looking down at her anymore.
I’m in her position.
Looking up.
At myself…
I bolt awake drenched in sweat, my chest heaving, my labored breaths the only sound in the dark loft of my cabin.
Holy.
Shit.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I scrub my hands over my face, trying to wipe away the last lingering vestiges of the nightmare, trying to clear my head of that horrific vision—my face on the man strangling the life from her.
But I know it will stay cemented there.
Just as it has for so many months.
Because it’s the same every night.
My father morphs into me as he kills my mother.
Not the one who raised me; the one who sacrificed her life to give me one.
