Page 13 of Delirium
I’d tried loving this new version of myself, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t erase the years that shaped who I really was for the sake of one man who could never accept me.
And we shouldn’t change ourselves just for someone to love us. We shouldn’t hide the dark parts of our souls just for one tiny crumb of love. Just because it hurt right now, it didn’t mean that it would hurt forever. I’d been through worse things and survived. I forgot, I forgave, and I moved the fuck on.
“Ophelia?” Indigo asked again just as we stepped inside the house. The entire foyer was empty, but the bottles lying around told me that they were all nearby. Did I really want to bring up my children here?
I grew up in a house of horrors, and I wanted them to have normalcy. I wanted them to feel safe, protected, loved, not observed like circus monkeys because of who their mother was. Genes were funny little things, and I had a feeling that these children would be more like me than Storm.
I hoped they would be.
I would make sure they were nothing like him.
“Thank you, Indigo.” I turned toward him before going upstairs. “Thank you for coming with me and for actually trying.”
I was making him feel uncomfortable, but I needed to say this.
“Look, talk to Atlas. Tell him how you feel.” His eyes flashed with anger, but he kept his mouth shut. “I don’t know what’s stopping you, but you should fight for him. Stop making the same mistakes the rest of us did and move on with him. Don’t hide it, okay?”
His lips parted, words on the tip of his tongue, and I could see that he wanted to argue with me, but he didn’t. He nodded, putting his hands in the front pockets of his pants. Defeat washed over me, the sinking realizations that this was it. This was the end.
“Would you be able to drive Kaiser and me to the city later on? I’m going to tell Kieran to wait for us there.”
“Sure,” he murmured. “I just… I hate to see you go, but I know why you have to.”
“At least somebody does.” I chuckled. “I’ll see you later?”
“Of course.” He smiled. “And, Ophelia,” he said just as I started walking upstairs, “If he tries to stop you, give him fucking hell.”
Oh, I planned to. Storm wasn’t stopping me this time. He wasn’t going to use my feelings against me.
I should have left a month ago. I should have left the moment that test result came back positive, but I stayed, stupidly hoping something would change. Stupidly hoping that I would be able to make up for the mistakes I had made.
I should have known that there was no use.
I should have known that a man like Storm never could forgive, always seeing only one side of the story—his side. He wanted me to be a villain? Very well, then, I would be one.
* * *
The silver bladeof one of my favorite knives shone underneath the overhead light. The head of a dragon perched on the very end of the handle, rough beneath my fingers; cold and unforgiving, just like my family. Just as I was.
Its sharp teeth colored in crimson bit into my fingers, the pain resonating through my hand, but it never reached the receptors in my heart. Numbness settled in, this heavy void swallowing the emotions at bay, and all the feelings I thought I would have were nowhere to be felt.
They evaporated as soon as I stepped inside the room, my eyes roaming over the bed where Storm held me for so many nights. All the anger, all the pain, they grew and grew and grew, spreading through my veins until they became nothing.
I became nothing.
I didn’t want to bring anything that they bought me. I didn’t want to burden myself with the memories of this place, and if one day I returned with my kids, maybe I would be able to look at it with new eyes.
I tucked the knife into the waistband of my pants as I stood up and walked toward the wardrobe in the corner of my room. There was nothing here holding me back. There was nothing screaming my name. Looking at all of these things, I could see that he tried erasing the core of me.
A pink T-shirt fell out as soon as I opened the wardrobe, anger surging through my bones all the way to my fingertips and as I bent down to pick it up. I pulled out the knife from my waistband and tore through it.
The fabric tore with the sharp slices of my blade, falling down around me, the pink mocking me. It wasn’t about the fucking color. It wasn’t about the fucking T-shirt. It was that I allowed myself to be this pathetic girl again.
Oh my God. What had I done to myself?
My phone started ringing from the bed, the sound bouncing against the walls, but I couldn’t move from the last piece of fabric I held in my hand. I had no doubt that it was Kieran calling, to tell me where he would wait for me, but I couldn’t move.
I didn’t move even when the door slammed open, the rage of a man who didn’t deserve me, moving through the room with heavy footsteps until he stood behind me, breathing like a bull. He had nothing to be angry about.
