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“… I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it for years,” she finishes.

“You’re not the kind of girl who can handle the shit I have to deal with.” I grit my teeth because I know she won’t give up easily.

“What kind of girl am I, then, huh? Why don’t you start telling me the fucking truth about how you feel about me instead of trying to pretend this is about me being a good girl! I’m not a good girl, Scar. You should know that by now!”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? What’s it going to take for you to back off?” I march forward and get right in her face.

“The truth! Tell me the fucking truth!”

“What do you want me to say? That I love you? That I can take care of you?”

“If that’s the truth, then yes.”

“I can’t love you. I don’t love. I’m full of hate. It’s all I feel. I’m a fucking monster. Don’t you get it?”

“What are you talking about? Everyone’s capable of love.”

“Not me.” I laugh bitterly.

“Why not?”

“I spent eleven years in hell. Whatever love I had is gone. It’s not coming back. You don’t have the first fucking clue about what happened to me. Whatever twisted, sick shit you’ve imagined is nothing compared to the truth.”

“Then tell me the truth. Talk to me. Tell me what happened.”

“Fine. You want to know what he did to me?”

“Yes,” she says softly. “I need to understand why you think you can’t love me.”

“Goddammit.” I run my hand through my hair and pace across the room. Where the hell do I even start? Maybe I’ll just jump to the worst day. That will be enough. Once she hears about it, she won’t think she’s in love with me anymore. No one could love me after what happened.

“Scar, come sit by me.”

“No.” I can’t. If I get anywhere near her while I’m trying to tell her about that night, I won’t be able to finish. If she so much as touches me, I’m done. She’s staring at me so intently that I don’t know if I can do this. But I have to. I need her to stop loving me because I’ll never be able to love her in return. She deserves better. She deserves a man who can love her so completely that she never doubts his love for her.

“We spent most of our time in the basement dungeon. We never knew what to expect, so whenever the door at the top of the stairs opened, we panicked. I’ll never understand why that day was different, but when that door opened, images started flashing into my mind.”

“What kind of images?”

“Plans.” I manage to spit the word out before my throat closes.

“Plans for what?”

“For me.”

She’s silent for a second, but I can tell she understands where this is going when her eyes fill with tears. My chest aches. I don’t want to hurt her, but I can’t hide who I am anymore.

“Blackstone always had elaborate plans for torturing us, but I didn’t realize it until after.”

“After? After he hurt you?”

“Yeah. When they dragged me upstairs, I had all these horrifying images in my head. I thought I was making the bad things happen to me because Blackstone did exactly what I’d pictured. Exactly.” My stomach rolls, and I’m afraid I’m going to be sick. I need a minute, so I go into the bathroom and close the door. I grab a glass off the counter and fill it with water. I gulp it down before returning to the bedroom.

“None of it was your fault,” she murmurs.

“I know that now, but I didn’t then. I thought I was causing my own torture. When I saw what he was going to do to the others, I thought I was projecting some sick, twisted fantasies onto him.”

“Did you ever have fantasies like that before?”