Page 156 of Loving the Tormentor

Wren picks me up as I drag my nails through his forearm.

"I'm so sorry, Nyx. I'm so sorry," he repeats. He's holding me with all his might, and I'm nothing in his arms as he drags me away.

I hear a deafeningthump.

A manic screech tears through my throat.

From the depths of my heart, I spill my pain. A hysteria like never before comes over me. I'm choking on a torturous agony that seems unending.

Wren doesn't put me down. He takes me up the stairs as I keep fighting him, calling Achilles's name in vain.

"It's impossible!" I scream, thrashing in his hold. "Impossible. Impossible." I repeat the word, but it loses its strength. My voice is raw, my brain going numb. "It's impossible. I love him. Please, I love him." As if that’s the science of it all. I love him so he can’t die.

I'm sitting on my bed, with Wren sitting beside me.

"I'm so sorry," he repeats in a broken voice.

I can feel my entire being shattering, my soul separating from my body. Every second, one more piece becomes dust as Achilles's presence disappears from my world.

"This isn't real," I say on repeat, the room blurring. "This isn't real."

I always imagined unbearable pain to come with a thousand gestures. Hands in my hair, flying arms, pacing and looking everywhere for a solution.

There's nothing. It's inside, tearing me apart, but my body is frozen in time, my hands on the bed, my gaze ahead on our bedroom door as my vision narrows.

"Tell me this isn't real," I plead with Wren. "Please, I'm begging you."

Any second now, Achilles is going to walk up the stairs. It wasn’t him in there. It was some man who tried to break into the house, and my psycho of a boyfriend killed him.

But the hair…the body type.

Any second now, I’m going to be told this is a bad joke. I’m going to be so fucking mad at him for scaring me like that.

Any second now, he’s going to come through that door, wink at me, and give me some bubblegum to calm me down.

"Nyx…" A quiet sob escapes Wren’s mouth, and that's when it hits me.

He's gone.

Achilles Duval left us like he always thought he would. He couldn't take the pain anymore, so he stopped it the only way he knew how.

And I'm left behind, carrying my sorrow and his. Our souls are woven so tightly that there's nothing but destruction inside me. In all the places where his love touched mine, there's an unfathomable emptiness I’ll never recover from.

Chapter Forty

Nyx

would’ve been you– sombr

"You think I killed him, don't you?"

Something in this small interrogation room is whistling. I don't know if it's the broken AC, the small radio attached to the detective's trousers, or the anxiety in my ears.

"Miss Mayer. What I'm asking is where you were this morning between the hours of four a.m and six a.m."

He taps his pen on the manila folder in front of him. It's closed, proof that he's not planning to take any notes, that my words don’t matter. I'm already guilty.

I look at the used tissues on the table. All me. My nose is stuffy. I can't breathe through it, and I still feel like I’m underwater.