Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Nyx
Love Me Wrong – Isak Danielson
He left the bathroom without bringing me back to the room of nightmares.
I wrap a towel around myself and go to the bedroom we'd been sharing for weeks.
He bought me a ton of new clothes after I lost everything in the fire.
I put on a hoodie, some simple panties, and a pair of straight jeans before heading downstairs.
My entire body is sore, but I couldn't care less. It's my mind that's in true pain. Achilles came after me. He saved me after I betrayed him, and he doesn't only hate me for it. He hates himself.
I find him sitting at the table in the kitchen with a book, but his eyes aren't even moving.
There's a cook who just finished making dinner.
He's packing up everything, and there are glass containers full of food stacked on top of each other.
The cook nods at me as he leaves and closes the kitchen door behind him, leaving us in a silence that weighs heavily on me.
"Achilles," I hesitate as I approach. "Please, can we talk?"
He closes the book, puts it on the table, and rests a hand on top of it.
"Why?" he asks. "What do you think it will achieve? Excuses? Pointing fingers?"
"No, I—" I cut myself off. What I want to achieve isn’t possible. I want him to trust me again.
"Do you know what happened the day Sophie's mom showed up at my door?"
I shake my head, feeling cold to my core.
"I was about to hang myself."
My heart sinks to my stomach. He said it in such a simple way that I’m not sure I fully understand.
"W-What?"
It shouldn't even come as a surprise. Achilles has it inside him.
That black hole that constantly swallows any chance at happiness.
That demon that sits on your chest at night and whispers that life isn't worth living.
He's got a storm of pain in his mind, and it shows in the way he struggles to get excited about life. In fact, he struggles to feel anything.
"Were you ever truly happy since what happened to you, Nyx?"
He lets the question hang, but I don't think he’s expecting an answer.
"That day, in France, I hadn't felt happiness since I was nine years old.
There hadn't been a spark of hope in my body since my father put his hands on me.
I thought the divorce was going to help, leaving the US, following my mom somewhere far from him.
But it didn't. And that's where the true hollowness hit me.
There was no coming back from what happened to me, and all I was capable of was shaping my life around that event. But I hated the shape it took."
His eyes stay on the book as he plays with the corner of the cover with his thumb. His voice isn't wavering; there's no hesitancy in it. It's Achilles's usual numb tone. The meaning of that numbness sinks in deeply.
"I wasn't ready to go, but I was ready to feel anything other than pain.
The despair within me was overwhelming. Everything was prepared.
All I had to do was, well, die. Someone rang the door to our apartment, and I decided to check who it was.
Probably because I was more desperate to cling onto life than I thought.
It was a girl from a random night out. And when she came up, she had a newborn with her.
My baby girl was barely a few weeks old. "
He looks up at me. "And suddenly, I didn't want to leave anymore. Suddenly, the detachment, the dullness…they were gone. Like anesthesia starting to run out in my body. We did a paternity test, and I decided to keep her since her mother couldn’t care for her.
For two years, I studied in Paris while my mom took Sophie to the South of France.
I'd visit once a week, and I watched my daughter become my sister so we could protect her.
Because if there's one thing I knew, and still do, it’s that I'll never let what happened to me happen to her. "
I'm closer to him now, taking slow steps as I approach him. My heart’s heavy, anchoring me to his every word.
"But then my dad started looking for me.
The Circle found me in Paris, and I couldn't take the risk of them finding out about Sophie, so I came back.
I didn't come back alone to Stoneview. The hopelessness and misery came back with me.
" He chuckles to himself. "Everyone’s always so quick to label me uninterested and blasé and arrogant, but no one ever wondered why nothing in life can make me smile.
Nothing made me feel that spark inside or gave me that will to live. I've always been an empty shell."
I'm right in front of him now, and I kneel between his legs. He instinctively pushes my damp fringe out of my eyes.
"Until you."
The finality of that statement drives the knife of betrayal deeper into my chest. It's my own betrayal, so surely, I'm the one holding the hilt.
"The answer to your question is no," I rasp, desperate to show him how I truly feel. "I hadn't truly felt happiness after what happened to me until you. Until us. No one ever made me feel the things you do, Achilles."
He cups my cheek with his hand, a gesture so caring and yet so different from all the other times he’s done it.
"Then why would you take it away from us?" he whispers. Even the soft sentence feels like another punch in the gut.
"I didn't know." I squeeze my eyes shut, sick of hiding behind that excuse for fear of making it all worse.
I open my eyes again, and I feel my face hardening.
"The truth is, they approached me when I’d lost everything.
When my trailer had burned down because you had ruined my relationship, and I was sitting in an interrogation room about to be arrested for a crime you committed.
I had nothing, no one, and you had proven to be someone I couldn't trust. You know…
I stupidly didn't want to hurt you then or get back at you?
I just wanted out of that nightmare. So I took the offer.
All I had to do was date you, and I was already on the cusp of being yours anyway.
I had no idea that this was where it was heading. "
I take his hands in mine, and he lets me. "I tried to stop it when I understood what was happening in the forest. I was too late. God, had I known back at the police station about the Circle, or Sophie, or the things that happened to you—"
"Then you should still have done it."
My eyebrows rise to my hairline, bewildered.
"Either way, you should’ve taken that favor from the Circle.
You were in that situation because of me.
I put you there. I made my bed. But…" He throws his head back.
"Fuck, Nyx, in what world do you love me enough that you'd have said something when you learned about everything?
All those nights we shared a bed, the Sundays on the sofa at this lake house, the moments we laughed together, New York. You had so many chances."
He points between me and him. "You did this to me. I’m a dreamer.
You should try it sometime. I did. You made me a dreamer.
Now I'm here believing that this isn't how the story is supposed to go.
You stopped pushing me away because the Circle told you to?
Okay. But at some point, you're supposed to fall for me.
To realize that our relationship is more than your obligations.
To tell me your secret so we can fight back against the odds together. "
His voice dies in his throat, and I read the last words on his lips. But you didn't love me enough for that.
"I love you," I croak. "Please, don't doubt my love for you. Keep punishing me. Hate me all you want–"
"I can't!" He stands up so abruptly, I fall back. "I can't hate you. I'm trying so fucking hard, and I can't find it in me." He points at his chest as he says that. "I find the hate for myself, and I feel the betrayal so deeply, and still…still, I can't. Fucking. Hate. You."
His gray eyes look down at me, the numbness all gone, replaced by the pain I've caused him.
"I want to love you with my entire soul. I'm so attached to you, there's a part of myself that dies every time I think of what you did. Our broken pieces fit so well together, I should’ve known something was coming to shatter us."
Like a man who’s lost his faith, he releases a long breath. "You were too good to be true."
I stand up, facing him. "Tell me what to do to save us. If you'd like me to leave and never contact you again, I'll leave you alone. But know that I'm doing it out of love."
He sniggers humorlessly, running a hand through his hair.
"You're not going anywhere, Nyx. You're my Hera. We're stuck together." The last words come down like a gavel announcing a death sentence. "And I'll never see my daughter again."
His eyes flick to his phone on the table the second it pings, and I'm left still trying to swallow that Achilles has given up.
"Ah, great. And we have a party at my father's house tonight." He rubs his hand across his face roughly, like the nightmare never ends for him. "Put on something nice. We're going to be introduced to his close friends as the Silent Circle's brand-new Shadow and Hera."