Page 275 of Once Upon a Fable

I couldn’t keep living with someone who wasnice. Who forced me to confront all my dark madness.

And the worst part?

The worst part was not knowing how she’d react. I’dhurt her. Yet instead of hurting me back, she’d given me something that no one else ever had.

She’d given me understanding, calmness. Granted access to her body and gifted me a split second of happiness. She did something no one else would ever have done, and I didn’t know how to handle that.

How was I supposed to keep my walls up, to protect myself from a past that had the power to suffocate me, all while Gemma Ashford broke me into pieces?

For hours, I sat against the wall, sinking into my misery. My stomach snarled with hunger, and my mind...well, that flickered with its familiar concussion and unreliable memory.

My eyes dropped to the chain binding her to me; the very same chain that’d clinked softly as she’d left the room on my request. I would never tell her, but my shitty memory had forgotten where I’d put the key. It wasn’t a good thing for someone like me to know she was close by, especially in my current state.

Just like the key was missing, tiny incidents that made up my life were gone. The blankness came on suddenly with no warning, erasing a few seconds, deleting my attempts at being better.

It was as if I fought an unwinnable battle.

I wanted to be good, but how could I when every part of me was bad?

I wanted to deserve her, but how could I when I’d always be a slave?

God, I was tired.

I felt wrung out and wrong, and something gnawed at me that couldn’t be ignored.

For all my shame of what I’d done to Gemma, she’d never once looked at me as if she cursed me. She’d shown incredible strength and sweetness.

She was so different, so pure, soright.

She was dirty because of me.

She was hurt because of what I’d done.

And I couldn’t sit there another goddamn moment without doing something to fix what I’d soiled.

Hauling myself from the floor, I stumbled a little as I bent for my jeans and stepped into them. My head rushed as I zipped them into place and rearranged the chain under my T-shirt.

Gritting my teeth against my constant headache, I stalked from the library.

I needed to find her.

To apologize.

To wash her clean from my filth.

To be honest and tell her that no one had ever treated me the way she did, and it messed with my defective mind.

I was...falling.

Falling in ways that fucking terrified me.

You sent her away after she gave you a gift.

I slammed to a stop in the foyer.

I winced as my head pounded.

I couldn’t go to her empty-handed.