You Really Should Be Thanking Me
We stood still as panicked pedestrians ran for shelter. Those resigned to find themselves drenched by the sudden downpour, eyed us with curiosity. Watching raindrops fall in powerful succession, riddling the dirt with holes, the vision of bullets going through flesh came to mind. I felt my lips stretch into a grin.
I must have looked insane, but the thrill coursing through my veins was unlike anything I’d felt in quite a while.
What else could I do but smile as it dawned on me that this was becoming our thing? We’d met on a day like this, Danger and I. Forced in close proximity as we truly faced and saw each other, under the restless cries of the sky.
Now here we were again.
Rhys and Danger, underneath a rainshower.
Odd as it may be, I was both amused and charmed by his anger. He was so full of rage, his wrath seemed to overflow as if he and the rain belonged to the same storm. I held on to his vicious gaze, recognizing in him the same tender emotion I felt within myself. It was buried so deep, I’m sure he wasn’t aware of it.
I remember when that emotion was so obvious, I could almost touch it with my fingertips. Though I sometimes still longed for it, that memory brought forth another.
Recalling one of our darker times together, I reached for my arm so I could hold on to something familiar. There lay a scar he’d once inflicted on me. It was something we shared. Something that had kept him from turning his back on me. Remains of a wound that only a great weapon could create, leaving behind nothing but the wreckage of its trajectory.
Powerful emotions also left such striking scars.
Love, it turns out, never stayed the same. It evolved into something found in ugly acts fueled and sharpened by jealousy—the birthmother of any form of betrayal. Weak people, those who thought themselves in love only to see it vanish upon the first sight of heartbreak, could never grasp the beauty of it all. The weight of it crushed them. So instead of climbing and surmounting it, they let go.
I could never do that.
Nor could I understand it.
How could they face themselves knowing that what had once been everything to them suddenly became worse than nothing? How could they survive the empty void that transformed their words of love into something so small, the word began to lose its meaning?
That was the real insult.
An affront to the scars they bore.
I couldn’t imagine anything worse than causing such a wound to fester and pretend there hadn’t been any other option at my disposal. As if fighting was some foreign notion, making a mockery of everything I hold dear.
Though he was too angry to see it now, I’d worked this hard for both our sakes. To heal the wound he had inflicted upon us in the first place. I’d made it my purpose, and I wasn’t finished yet.
It was going to be the ugliest, most riveting thing we’d ever felt—just so we could be born anew in the love we shared.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” the deep rasp of his voice drummed through the heavy rain, and somehow settled into my bones.
Though his tone was venomous, I could see fatigue, incredulousness, and a vortex of contradictory emotions shifting through his eyes.
Aversion.
Loathing.
Yearning.
Lust.
Tenderness.
Violence.
I glimpsed into their softness and held on while he continued his tirade.
“For us to war with each other. Did you not care at all that I would aim to make you suffer worse than you made me suffer?”
It was difficult to keep laughter from breaking out of me.
Oh, if only he could feel my happiness in this moment.
For him to read me so perfectly… Could a man who didn’t love me truly do that?
“Of course,” I said. “After all the humiliation I suffered, I was bound to use my power—not only to ruin you, but to ensure I’d be the only one you could rely on. Then I thought… What would be the fun in that? Why give you pain and then give myself as a reward? I have pride, too. I am worth obsessing over. Life is full of things your mind wanders to—far too many. Perhaps it was my greed talking, but I figured I should give you that much—so I did. I gave you focus. I gave you something new that only the both of us would share. A single, maddening thought to hold on to every morning. Someone you could seethe over before going to bed, until all that remained was an obsessive need to see me suffer what you suffered. Though ironically, isn’t this already our second merry-go-round? Hadn’t I already torn my own heart out of my chest to hand it to you? Hadn’t I already bound myself to you all those years ago? But of course, you couldn’t see that in me until that desire burned so brightly inside you, it gave you something true to live for. Only now do you see me. Only now do you realize what we have.”
