I couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t stand another word about the past, about the shit I brought down on myself.

It was her fucking turn.

Her gray-green eyes stared at me with pain, but they were also devoid of so much.

“Why are you so empty?” I asked, turning the tides. If I was opening up, she sure as fuck was going to let some out as well.

She stared at me. I could see in her eyes the way she tried to find words to answer, and I had a feeling she was going to try and brush it off like she’d done so many times before.

“I can see it as clear as day. It’s one of the many things that drew me to you. You’re empty. You wear a mask to hide it, to make yourself seem somewhat normal, but your face… Do you know how expressionless it is when you think no one is looking? I provoke you to get some kind of reaction like you provoke me to feel. Have you ever been happy?”

She continued to stare at me, unable or willing to answer, but I saw the shake begin in her hand.

“Is that why you chose law? Contracts in general, because it’s cold with precise guidelines? The people at the office don’t see it. They think you’re frigid, but I know you have a loving soul. The problem is you were never shown love, right? That’s very cruel, to grow up without love.”

For too long I’d gone with a hatred built up in me with no outlet. From the very second I first saw her, I knew there was something broken about her. Even since then I’d seen snippets of whatever horror laid in her past, but nowhere to direct the anger that had formed. No person to hate, to hunt down.

“Shut up!” She jumped to her feet, fists clenched at her side as she shot me daggers with her eyes.

Even though she pushed me, she resisted when it was turned on her. I moved to stand in front of her, to leave her no space to run until she let it out.

“Why? Because you don’t want someone to point out what you’re lacking?” I hit with low blows, words to incite her. “That’s why things failed with you and Andrew, isn’t it? He couldn’t take your darkness, couldn’t fill your void. He seems like the type to want to fix something that’s broken.”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” she screamed as she beat her fists against my chest. “Please, it hurts!”

The tormented look on her face was heartbreaking, but she needed the evisceration of her pain.

“Why?” I pressed.

Her face scrunched up as the pain overtook her. “Because I was never wanted, I was never good enough, never smart enough, never loved! He hated me. I was in the way of his happiness, shackled to him.”

He?

“He hated that my mother died and forced me upon him. A child he never wanted from a woman he knew for a day. The things he said, the things he did, the looks he gave…so many times, he wouldn’t even give me that. It hurt more than when he smacked me or grabbed me and yelled. Those were the only times he ever touched me. He was my father. He was supposed to love me. Protect me!”

The blood in my veins turned to ice. Fuck.

It was one thing to speculate, but another to have it confirmed.

“My stepmother, she ignored me. Oh, God…the nasty things she would say to bring me down. She knew he wouldn’t stop her. He encouraged her. Then there was Adam…”

Fuck fuck fuck! A grown fucking man wouldn’t stop a woman from abusing his child? What the fuck kind of bastard was he?

What worried me the most was the lost look in her eyes and the way she trailed off. Her arms crossed her chest as her entire body shook.

“He took high advantage of being able to say and do whatever he wanted.”

Do?

Do?

What the fuck did he do to her?

“He hated it when I moved in, hated his beloved stepfather bringing him a sister, and made it his personal mission to make me the most alienated and bullied kid in school. I kept my head down, my mouth shut, and prayed for someone to see me. For someone to love me… I still don’t know why I never killed myself. I thought about it, a lot.”

Her voice cracked at the end.

I stood there staring at her, completely numb, watching as she crumbled before me. Sobs tore from her, each one a searing pain to my chest. I pulled her to me, holding her up as she fell apart.

I stroked her hair in an attempt to calm her.

“You’re dead inside, just like me.”

“That’s not true,” she said with a shake of her head. “You have very strong emotions, violent almost.”

I let out a maniacal laugh full of bitterness and regret “You don’t get it.” I pulled back to look at her. “I wish I was dead,” I said, letting out my darkest secret. “I wish the paramedics had taken five more minutes to get there.”

I heard the smack before I felt it. My vision blurred as my head jolted to the side. My gaze snapped back to her, stunned as to what happened. Her hand was up, and tears slid down her cheek.

“Please, don’t leave me,” she whispered through broken gasps.

“I wish the battery on the defibrillator had been out,” I pressed on. “That way they wouldn’t have been able to restart my heart. Because then I wouldn’t feel dead inside, in pain daily. Because I wouldn’t be here, hurting you.”

How much more of this can we take before we break?

I didn’t have an answer, but I continued on, telling her my story without telling her everything. Morbid details of the condition I was left in.

“I’m angry because I’m alive. My heart, my soul…they’re gone, dead, but my body remains. This is my purgatory.”

“No, no, no, no! Please, please, Nathan… I can’t fathom… I need you. You make… I’m falling… Please, please, please.” The words bounced out between gasping breaths.

Lila broke, shattering in my arms. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she yelled, begged, pleaded with me to not leave her as her fists beat on my chest.

Not leave her?

She leaned into me, her body somehow revolting. I wrapped my arms tighter around her, but she pulled back, her hands smacking my chest.

“No!” she screamed as she attempted to push me away.

“Lila,” I said her name in an attempt to get her attention. She was borderline hysterical, and I was afraid she was going to start hyperventilating. I grabbed her arms and tried to get her to see me, hear me, anything. “Baby, stop!”