Chapter 16
I woke to a messy bed, pillows on the floor. The smell and the bodily memory of nights that had once made me smile the next morning, but not today.
This morning, there was only a crushing weight in my chest.
The cold, absent feeling shadowed any breath of humor in me. Tears filled my eyes and slid from the corners when I squeezed the sheet between my fingers.
I couldn’t forget. I was incapable…
The way I felt was wrong. Completely improper.
Sick. Dirty. Unworthy. Humiliated. Unhappy.
All that time pushing Thor away, protecting myself from him, had served no purpose. I hated myself and scolded myself at the same time for being so damned weak.
So there I was again, being used as his doll.
I left the bed and went into the bathroom. Under the warm shower, I tried not to think about the things filling my mind in that moment, postponing what was coming.
In a state of stupor, I moved mechanically.
Our scent was everywhere.
I stripped all the bedding and used towels, shoved them into the laundry hamper, then put fresh sheets on the bed. And after that, I opened the curtains, letting the sun in.
I looked at the made bed, the clean-smelling new sheets.
It brought me no joy. On the contrary, it hurt like hell.
Oh, God, how I wished this were a fresh start for us! To simply be able to go on from here and embrace our family. However, there was a big but here.
I had never felt like a slut… until now.
My eyes flooded, and I opened my mouth, drawing in air hard, the pressure inside too strong, my chin trembling. I didn’t cry, forcing the feeling down.
That was it. We couldn’t keep this situation going any longer, pretending everything was fine when everything around us was destroyed, pretending we were only taking time.
Everything was not fine. There was no such thing as time. We didn’t exist, even though…
Thor needed to stop.
We had to stop.
I seriously tried not to get upset, but the growing irritation was too intense to ignore. Still, I tried not to let it get the best of me.
I caught a glimpse of the living room when I tracked the smell of food. My sandals were tossed in a corner, the dress and panties on the sofa… I ran my gaze around… The table was set for breakfast… I shifted to the left… Thor was in the kitchen.
I stopped, stiff as a board, frozen inside, watching him move, humming, with the natural ease of someone who had always belonged there.
It hurt more, but that same pain opened into emptiness, killed my spirit.
I had been watching Thor over these months, especially when he had infiltrated my home. In distracted moments, I caught myself enchanted, until the memories rolled through my mind, reminding me why we were like this.
For God’s sake, I had run from him!
Thor didn’t know, but every family moment he provided, every little thing he did, cooking for us, going to the market, caring for our son, making my routine easier, even our good coexistence.
His beautiful moments with Lucca, like the time he massaged his little feet while watching soccer in bed, or when he read to him, or danced late at night to get him to sleep when our son fussed.
His behavior as a father, as a family man, as my man…
There was an abyss between us, and inside it only darkness.
I wasn’t going to forgive him. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.
Thor could suffer until death because yes, I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to feel every tear of pain and desperation taking my breath, my sleep, my peace.
For a long time, I felt as if I had been dismembered. Heithor did this to us, and now, it was only fair that he bear the consequences, just as I had borne mine.
I breathed deeply, straightening my spine, chin raised, face closed.
Pride was pure acid running through my veins.
I was more than what Thor made of me.
More than the compliant, worthless little woman he believed I was. More than the little woman who solved everything by spreading her legs.
I was worth more than that. I wouldn’t sabotage myself for him. I wouldn’t weaken just because he claimed to be sorry. My wounds, all my suffering, were still felt.
My heart contracted, crushed, as small as a grain of rice.
The weight of sadness was suffocating my throat. I watched him notice my presence and turn to me, smiling widely. So much brightness… So much love… It sickened me, enraged me further. This happiness was only his. Thor had stolen it from me.
I hated him madly for making me hate him.
“Hey, baby, good morning!”
He came to me and tried to kiss me, and I pulled back, cold to the bone.
His happy expression withered a little, going alert.
“What is it, Ella?”
“What are you doing, Heithor?”
“Our breakfast.” And he asked, his voice full of concern, his hands on my arms, pinning me in place. Not that he needed to. I was planted there while I tried to keep my emotions under control. “Is everything okay? Did I hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” I muttered, looking down.
Heithor tried to kiss me again.
“No.”
“Ella?”
“I said no!” I said in a flash of rage.
Heithor released me, but didn’t move away.
“What’s happening, love?”
“You have to go,” I bit out, wrapping my arms around myself.
“What are you saying? Last night we…”
“Spent the night together, Heithor. That was all.”
“What? No, baby, don’t say that,” he said pleadingly, his voice cracking.
Pain crossed his gaze. And damn it, that pricked me too.
“I don’t want to fight, and we don’t need to end like this,” I said calmly. I wasn’t going to lose it. Pain filled me, heavy, tiring me from any explosive reaction.
Was it possible to die of love? I was dying.
Why did it have to be so difficult when he had hurt me so easily? Why couldn’t it be easy to let him go when he hadn’t thought twice about doing the same to me?
This was what I wanted, wasn’t it?
“What changed from yesterday to today? We shared something special, Ella. I know I screwed up and that you don’t believe me now, but I love you. That never changed.”
I huffed a laugh, inhaled deeply, and shook my head.
“It was just sex, Heithor.”
His eyes flashed with violence, fists clenched.
“You can deny it as much as you want, but you know the truth. Yesterday was much more than just sex. We shared love, Ella. You can’t fake that.”
“It doesn’t matter what it seemed like to you. This ends here,” I pointed out. “We’ve been pretending everything is fine, but everything is not fine. It never was, Heithor.”
“Ella, I don’t want to be without you. I don’t expect to recover your trust and faith in us in a couple of days, fuck, maybe not even in a couple of months or even years, but if you give me a chance, I swear I’ll make every day of our lives worth it. You won’t regret it.”
“Heithor, stop…”
“What do you want me to do? I can’t forget you, and fuck, I’ve tried.”
I shrugged, my voice sliding into sadness.
“It’s your decision to choose what to do, but don’t expect me to cooperate with it. I built something here. I’m still building it, and you’re not going to fuck that up.”
His face tightened with hurt.
“You really think I want to fuck up your life? Destroy your achievements? What the fuck, Antonella! I’m happy as hell, fucking proud of what you did here.”
“You can’t forget the things you did to me, Heithor.”
He tried to approach again, and I stopped him with my gaze.
“I’m deeply ashamed of my mistakes, baby. I changed. I’m not the man I was. I’m working on my flaws. I learned from them. I swear to you.”
“We’re on different pages.”
“That doesn’t keep you from finding your way back to me, Ella. I can be your next blank page, be your fresh start every day.”
“Heithor, no…”
He invaded my personal space and took my face in his hands, silencing me.
“There’s no sense in being without you, Antonella.”
“Thor, you hurt me so much.”
“You are my home, Ella. You are everything I want from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. Without you, I’m lost. I made a mistake. And I want to fix it… If you want to punish me, do it, but please forgive me, give me a chance. Nothing is irreparable.”
“No.”
“You’d rather feed your resentment than try to give us a chance to be happy?”
“I’d rather you stop upsetting me. Love alone isn’t enough, you more than anyone should know that, shouldn’t you?
Not when the bad memories outweigh the good.
Not when I look at you and all I can feel is sadness and anger.
Not when my desire to hurt you is greater than my desire to make you happy, or when I feel filthy after you’ve touched me.
I can’t tolerate that. I can’t live that way just because…
I love you… We’re not going back to what we were, because we never were anything except the parents of a beautiful boy, and I hope for his sake we can coexist well. It’s over.”
I had never seen Heithor falter… until today. He blinked. His mouth opened, then he closed it as if he had thought better of it, and when he spoke again, it was strange.
“I thought… I thought we were getting somewhere here… that we still made sense to you… Yesterday showed that. I didn’t imagine it, Ella.”
“No, Heithor… I didn’t lead anything on. You wanted to see it that way, but that isn’t the truth. This is what I’ve been trying to tell you since you came back into my life. We are over.”
It hurt and satisfied me to see his eyes wet, the painful expression engraved forever in my mind. Thor nodded, looking sick, then he turned and left.
I stood there, still, not breathing, looking at the door closing softly. Even so, the silence was like a bomb resonating inside me.
There are sorrows that are little deaths.
***
Time passed without my seeing it. I had returned to that era when sadness accompanied me twenty-four hours a day, but now there was something different.
I was harder and emptier than ever. The days were insipid, the nights boring, carrying a kind of horrifying normality while the hours ran on.
Sometimes, I grew tired of being inside myself and felt I was alone in life, and that I would always be that way. It was too heavy.
At some point, I resigned myself.