Page 20 of Delirium
“You still should have told me,” she said, her eyes opening and zeroing in on mine. “You should have told me the truth,” she clipped.
“I know.” I nodded. “But words aren’t my strength, and I was too afraid of losing you. A part of me always knew we would meet again, but I didn’t know that the kind and sweet little girl would grow up to be the woman I loved.”
“Don’t use words you don’t know the real meaning of, Storm,” she mumbled, pulling away from me. “Don’t tell me you love me just to appease the beast in your chest, because you don’t. When you love someone, you burn the entire world to get to them. You show them what they mean to you. Words are easy to use, but it’s hard putting them into actions. And your actions showed me that this obsession you have over me is nothing more but the cloaked desire to exact revenge on my family.”
“No.” I shook my head. “That’s not true.”
“It might not be true in your head because you refuse to believe it, but it isn’t love, Storm. This… This isn’t healthy. Not for you, not for me, and it won’t be healthy for our children.”
“You’re not leaving, Ophelia.” I exhaled. “I fucked up, but I will fix it. I promise I will fix it.”
She shook her head. “You can’t.” Her hand covered mine on the floor. “You can’t fix it because I don’t want you to fix it.”
“No, you don’t mean that.”
“I do, Storm. I mean that with all my heart. You need to let go of this silly little idea, darling. You need to let me go and let me be happy somewhere else.”
Anger surged through me, the mere thought of her with another man narrowing my vision, surrounding it in red. Before she could react, I lifted my arm up, wrapping my hand around her neck and pulled her closer to me.
“You’re mine,” I bit out. “Mine to love. Mine to touch. Mine to care for. These kids, they’re mine and yours, and we’re going to raise them together, Ophelia. If you try to run, I will fucking chase you to the ends of the earth. You will hate me even more once I catch you, but you will be mine. Today, tomorrow, in a hundred years, this wicked heart of mine will always belong to you. It’s yours for taking, yours for destruction, but don’t ever think that I would be okay with you leaving. Especially not with Kieran.”
“You don’t own me, Storm,” she gritted through her teeth.
“But you own me!” I bellowed. “You fucking own me, body, mind, and soul. I am nothing without you. Nothing,” I breathed out. “I keep fucking this thing up because I don’t know how to let you in fully. I don’t know how to trust people, how to keep them by my side. Everyone I have ever loved has died on me. Everyone I trusted in my past has betrayed me somehow, and our track record isn’t exactly spotless.”
“Storm,” she murmured, her eyes on my lips. “I keep telling you to let me go, but you’re a stubborn fucker, aren’t you?”
“I’m not giving up, Sunshine. I could be pissed off at you. I might want to spank your tight, little ass for the shitshow you caused today, but I am never giving up. Get that inside your head.”
Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears, and I hated myself even more for how I made her feel.
“I can’t trust you, Storm. I don’t trust any of you right now. I can’t put myself on the line, when every single time I do that, you end up shattering the carefully glued pieces of my heart. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”
“Then I will prove to you that you can trust me,” I argued, rubbing my thumb against the soft skin of her neck. “I will prove that all of this isn’t just a ruse or a lie. I want you to be happy and I need you here, Ophelia. I need you by my side. Now more than ever.”
“What do you mean?”
I didn’t want to tell her this. I didn’t want to even think about it, but we had no other choice. We needed to get to the bottom of this.
“Nikolai might be dead,” I started. “But his legacy lives on. The Red Manor is still active, and there are people in Winworth who are unfortunately in the middle of a major shitstorm. I want to help them as much as I can. No one could help me, but maybe we could help them. I need you with me.”
“You have Nova.”
This woman. If pettiness had a name, it would be called Ophelia. If anger had a visual, her picture would be right next to it.
“You know as much as I do that she means nothing to me.”
“Yet, you still slept with her only two weeks after they found my body.”
“It wasn’t even your body!” I thundered. “I knew it wasn’t you. I knew it couldn’t have been you.”
“How?” She stood up, moving away from me. “How could you know? That girl was almost the same size as me. Her—”
“Because I knew your face!” I belted out. “I could never forget the lines of your face, or your hands… Your entire body. Do you want me to tell you how everything shattered around me when they first called us? Do you want me to tell you that my world ceased to exist when Atlas told me they found your body? I couldn’t breathe, Ophelia. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t exist because I thought you were gone.” My voice broke in the end, and I stood up, facing her. “Do you want me to tell you that I wanted to die with you?” I whispered, wrapping my hand around the metal bar. “Because the world in which you don’t exist, isn’t the world that I want to live in. It simply isn’t.”
“And then what? Your pain brought you to sleep with her? What, you stumbled and your dick suddenly slipped into her pussy.”
“No. I figured out it wasn’t you and I got the picture of you from that wedding in Ventus City, laughing with Cole Mancini, while I died every single day, little by little, living without you.”
