Chapter 18 #2
I scold her like she’s someone else, a stranger I stitched together from smoke and lies.
But she’s not. She’s me. And the chaos of her collides with the art of this cruel game, and now Blake, my Blake, is falling in love with a ghost. With Pandora.
With me wearing another face. And it’s hijacking every inch of my fractured heart.
His reply flickers across the screen: “Wow. All women seem to like the same things. So weird.”
I can see him in my mind, biting his lip the way he does when he’s thinking, head tilted, brows furrowed. My pulse stutters hard against my throat. Maybe this is it. Maybe he’s piecing it together. Maybe it ends here.
“Why do you say that? How many women have you said the same things to?”
I try to lace it with coolness, a little playful bite, distraction, smoke, and mirrors. It’s so hard to lie. To pretend you’re someone else when you’ve only ever lived as one person.
His answer slides back too fast: “Ha, no one, babe, just you. But it’s oddly familiar to the woman I had before. So many things you like, she loved.”
“Before?....” I typed out fast, breath shallow.
Before what? Before you killed us? Before you snapped the spine of a love that belonged to you more than life itself? Before you shattered me, stole all of my light, and left me bleeding in the dark with nothing but cider bottles and unslept nights?
Three lines hover. My feet move without thought, carrying me down streets I don’t recognize. The night presses in, chill wrapping around me, but the streetlights hum awake, warm yellow halos buzzing like tired suns. They cast me in their false safety while his silence crushes me.
The three lines vanish.
My breath stumbles. Fingers curl around my phone so tight the bones ache. My boots scrape pavement, each step unsteady, too small, like I’m walking inside someone else’s shoes. Five more kilometres and I’ll be at the sea. I can taste the salt already, the black horizon waiting for me like a grave.
And then his message cuts through:
“She was no one you need to know about.”
Those words slit me clean through. My chest hollows. My body trembles like glass in the wind. My soul feels wafer-thin, ready to tear.
“She was no one?” I type, though my eyes are drowning. “She sounds like someone.”
The waves break. Tears flood. Loneliness hits violently, bone deep.
His love should’ve been CPR, but all I get is silence threaded with knives.
My knees buckle into the wet sand as the tide rushes up, white foam curling over the black hem of my coat.
It drags me deeper into the earth, grains slipping away, pulling me down, down, down.
The next reply claws across the screen. “She was my home for a while, but I outgrew her. Now I’m searching for a new home. And I feel like it’s your roof I want to stand under.”
Love isn’t made for cynics. I wasn’t one. God, I never was, but maybe I should’ve been. Because this? This is cliché strung up in neon lights. The words, the approach, the false poetry. And yet it’s killing me because the ghost he’s chasing is mine. Penn’s. Not Pandora’s.
The waves claw harder, icy claws ripping at my clothes, the sea begging to pull me under. I whisper to it: “I still have a soul, and he promised to hold my hand. But his eyes, they’ve gone cold. And I’ve been left behind.”
My coat drags heavily, my shoes already swallowed by the tide. I almost want to go.
His reply pulls me back like barbed wire: “With me, it won’t be like before. It’ll be brilliant shades of red, pink, and purple. No pale blues, no tears. Just us. Just me laying you down every night, having you calling for the holy ghost as I worship your body.”
My hands shake. I blink at the screen, horror and longing colliding in my blood.
“In a violent way?” I type, voice barely a whisper over the roar of the ocean.
“In a way that has you forgetting your name. In a way that has you seeing the holy ghost right before your eyes, lock with mine, and you come harder than you ever have. No man before me. No man after me.”
My throat tightens. “Oh, you’re that sure?”
“I’m that sure.”
I laugh, broken, breathless. “I’ve only ever had one man before you. He broke far more than my spirit.”
“I’ll fuck you back into the right pieces and love you into the girl he hurt, baby.”
The tears burn like acid. My stomach knots. He’s writing this filth for her—for Pandora—but every word is a shadow of what he once promised me.
“You know it, baby. Come meet me. I’ve got wine, chocolates, flowers, and a sweet teddy to keep you warm and give you company when I’m not there.”
I roll my eyes, dragging the sea into my lungs. The temptation claws at me, his arms, his body, the ghost of our nights. But he doesn’t want Penn. He wants the fantasy.
So, I answer simply: “When?”
“Tonight.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Sorry, I just can’t.”
“I wanna see you. Hold you. Touch you. Kiss you.”
“Whoa, slow down. This is insane.”
“Insane? No, baby. You only get one life. I learned that the hard way. No point being scared and lonely.”
The waves slam harder, soaking me through. I feel like I’m at my own funeral.
“I knew from the first message you were it. You’d pull me out of the dark. Dance with me in the rain.”
I choke on a laugh, bitter and raw. “You’re a man of many romantic words, Blake.”
“Just say the word, and I’ll prove it. My tongue can do more than form words, baby. It’ll write its poetry across your skin till you’re begging me to stop.”
My thighs clench in shame and fury. “God, I’m jealous of your keyboard. Of all the girls before me.”
“No girl after you. Just you. Say the word, baby, I’ll pick you up. Worship your body till the sun comes up.”
My chest cracks open. My body aches with want and loathing.
“Whoa, Blake…shit, sorry. I gotta go.”
I shut the screen down just as the sea rises higher, raging like my grief, my fury, my ruin. Every word he plans for Pandora is something he’s already done to me.
And that is the cruellest ache of all.
That’s me. That’s Penn. He’s falling in love with me, again. He just doesn’t know it.
And then he ruins it.