Page 209 of Dark Duet: Platinum Edition

“You think I don’t swallow my pride? Fuck you! All I’ve done for months is swallow my pride. I’ve apologized ad nauseum. I fuck you when you want to be fucked. I play nice for your friends. I wait for you to come home because I have nothing more to do. You’ve become my whole life!

“Meanwhile, you’re writing about me. You still see me as the man I was. You still see the killer—beautiful on the outside and hideous on the inside. Why are you with me? Why am I trying so hard to be someone else when all I’ll ever be to you is the man who ruined your life? I follow you around like a love-sick bitch and every day I fight the urge to go back to what I know. There are days when I want to go back to being the person I was because that person couldn’t love you. The man I was wouldneverbe this weak!”

I shouted through the pain in my throat and that, coupled with the emotion working its way to the surface, threatened to close off my airway. Livvie’s face was a mask of indifference. It chilled my bones. How had she learned to be so cold? I knew the answer even as I asked the question.

“You love me?” she asked as she looked into my eyes. “When did you come to the realization? Was it when I told you I loved you and you said it was cute? Or maybe it was after I killed a man? Possibly when I begged you not to leave me at the border?

“Did you realize you loved me while I was alone in the hospital and weeping over you? When did you shout your love from the rooftops, Caleb? I couldn’t hear you. I was too busy trying to fucking breathe without you. I was busy convincing everyone around me I wasn’t crazy for defending my kidnapper. So, remind me. When did you say the words? I’ll be sure to go back in time and comfort the broken girl you left in your wake. Your love can comfort her, because I’m not the same person anymore.

“I’ve learned to breathe without you. I’ve learned there’s no one in this life I can trust. It isn’t that you read my words. I don’t care about that. I would have shown you eventually. It’s the note you left. It’s now. It’s knowing that at any moment you’re going to run off and leave me again. How can I tell you I love you? How could I survive it again?”

I was stunned into silence. Every cell in my body crawled with shame. Livvie was a survivor. She’d survivedme. I realized then what I was witnessing was not indifference—it was pain. Livvie was in pain and it was my fault.

I didn’t know what was happening, but it came on suddenly. My nose started running and I sniffled. I knew Livvie was watching me. I knew how ridiculous I must look, how weak and broken. I couldn’t even care. I had nothing left to lose. I did my best to clear my throat before I spoke.

“I couldn’t say it, Kitten. I’d just finished… I loved him.” I felt my chest shaking.

“Who?” Livvie whispered. She was still so stoic.

“Rafiq,” I said softly. Livvie sighed.

“Why, Caleb? You know what he did.”

“Yes. I know what he did. I also know what he didn’t do: He never touched me the way the others did.” A part of me couldn’t believe I was about to go into this with her. I’d read her story and it had me thinking of my own. I suppose I thought I owed her the other half of our tale. I needed her to know I hadn’t cast her out without good reasons. “I was so young, Livvie. I was so powerless. Every day I was raped by someone. I was raped every day until I started to convince myself it wasn’t rape. I let them touch me. I let them… fuck me. I smiled at the ones I saw more often than the others, imagining they must care for me. Why else would they come back to use me repeatedly?

“Eventually, I believed them. I believed them when they said they cared. I believed them when they promised to buy me from Narweh. I let myself hope that one day I would be free.” I heard myself sob. The sound was far away, as though someone else were falling apart and not me. “It never happened. They never cared. They were never going to set me free. It was the hope they loved to toy with—my hope. I let it die.

“And then one day… Rafiq came. He picked me up, whipped and bloody. He took me home and nursed me. He fed me. He fed my body. He fed my mind. He fed my soul. He taught me how to do more than survive—he taught me how tolive. And he never touched me.

“For years he took care of me. I didn’t need hope anymore. I had something better. I hadpurpose!I loved him for that. And then…” I felt numb as I stared off into space. “I learned the truth.”

My body shook as I recalled the night I murdered him.

“I wasn’t anything, Livvie. I wasn’t anything to him and he’d beeneverythingto me. I would have died for him and the whole time… I was nothing.” I finally looked at Livvie. Tears were on her cheeks. “But that’s not the worst part. No, the worst part is that I meant to kill him before I knew the truth. It was the only way to set you free and I… I killed him, Livvie. I killed him and I buried him in Felipe’s garden where his family will never find him. I buried the only person I thought I could trust. I loved him, and he turned out to be the person responsible for the most horrendous betrayal of my life.

“And then I realized I’d done the same to you. I’d beaten you. I’d raped you, and worse—I even made you like it. I fed you hope and I snatched it away. I made you love me! How could I tell you? I couldn’t tell you, Livvie. I was confused. I was…broken. I’mstillbroken. I don’t know who I am or what I want. All I know is that without you… without you, there’s nothing. I’m nothing. Do you have any idea how terrifying that is for someone like me?”

My feelings toward her were on the tip of my tongue. I’d been holding the words in since the moment I had watched her walk out of my life, and if she’d turned around and looked at me for even a second, I wouldn’t have been able to resist telling her then.

I love you.

I couldn’t say it in Mexico. I had lost too much that day. I had lost my reality. What could I possibly understand about love when the only person I was sure I did love had lied to me for twelve years? Livvie had said she was mine. How could I be sure? Worse, what if it were true? What if she loved me and all I had to offer was a husk of a heart to love her with? How can anyone understand what love is without experiencing it? It would be like trying to describe color to a blind man. Some things you have to see for yourself. To understand love, you have to feel it for yourself.

It wasn’t until Livvie walked away and I was truly alone in the world that I began to feel what love could be. It didn’t come to me as it came to others; I had to find love as I had found everything else that defined me: through my suffering. The chasm Livvie’s absence opened in me was a hungry void. It was alive, the void, and it would not be filled with vengeance. It was not soothed by my attempts to right my wrongs. It was not pleased by random women. It did not sleep, despite the amount of drink I imbibed to dull my senses.

There was only one thing the void wanted. Greedily tearing me apart, it asked for Livvie. It wanted my hopes, my dreams. It wanted my memories of her face. It wanted the laughter we had shared. “Mine,” the void had decreed. Only Livvie could make me whole, and as soon as I had realized it, I couldn’t stop looking for her. I’d become obsessed with knowing if she really loved me.

The first touch of Livvie’s hand on my shoulder had me sobbing again. Love made me weak. I wished it would go away. Instead, it crushed me under its heel. I let Livvie push me back onto the bed. And when I heard her turn away, love made me beg.

“Please don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

I felt her fingers running through my hair.

“I would never leave you, Caleb. I just wanted to get you some water.”

“I don’t want water.”

“Scotch? Whiskey?”