Page 57 of Selfish Desires

I yanked all the monochrome pictures from Wendy’s frozen hands, browsing through them. They were all candids and clueless about being watched.

“Can someone please say something?” Blair implored.

I glanced at the others, a shiver of anger and fear running through me. I held up the photographs showing Wendy at different locations and times. Someone had been watching her, following her.

“These pictures,” I said, my voice rough from the raw emotion surging through my veins. Exchanging a brief glance with Zachary, he already knew. “I went after the wrong person. It’s happening again.”

“It’s happening again,” said Vincent, his words spinning in my head, haunting every inch of bone in my body. What was happening again? I wasn’t even sure. The pictures? His betrayal? Abandoning me? What was Vincent referring to exactly? I started to tremble as an unexpected chill wracked my body. I couldn’t do this again.

Go through this again.

“I'm sorry, Wendy,” he said. His voice came out strangled and hoarse, like it was dragged from the depths of his soul. Vincent grabbed my cold hands and held them tight like his lifeline. “I will take care of this...again.”

“It sounds like it was never taken care of in the first place.” Tears welled up in my eyes, but I blinked them away. It was like reliving a nightmare, and I was caught in deja vu. As much as I wanted to push him away, to yell at him, blame him for turning my life into an emotional battlefield, I found myself incapable. There was something about Vincent, an inexplicable pull that always drew me back to him despite everything.

“We’re going to figure this out together. I promise,” Vincent added urgently like he was pleading for forgiveness, for acceptance.

“Are you out of your mind?” Blair stepped forward and away from Zachary and a sleeping Sadie. “Wendy, he’s putting you in danger. Let him figure it out.”

“Blair, stop,” Zachary warned, his fingertips brushing Blair’s arm, but she wrenched away.

“I’m serious.” Blair glared at Zachary before turning to me. “Look at what he's done to you, Wendy,” she said, her eyes brimming with anger and worry. “He left you once, didn't he? How are you so sure he won't do it again?”

My heart pounded as I looked from Blair to Vincent, torn between the past and the present, between love and fear.

“Shut up, Blair,” Vincent snarled, anger burning in his blue eyes like the hottest and deadliest flames.

“Blair,” Zachary warned again, his eyes ablaze.

“You’re defending him?” Blair pivoted to face her husband, eyes wide in shock.

“Let them figure it out.” Zachary nodded to me and Vincent.

Blair’s response was sharp, cutting through the fallen tense silence. “That’s not your decision to make, Zachary.”

“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But it’s not yours either.”

As the argument thickened in the tiny space, the walls surrounding my heart crumbled. Zachary was right: it was my choice. But what were even my choices? Follow Vincent blindly? If he would even allow me to…

“Wendy?” Vincent’s voice dragged me back to reality.

I turned to him, and in his eyes, I saw the same torment mirrored in my own. A man chained to his past, a man desperately seeking redemption. I momentarily let myself be lost in those blue depths, reassuring him that I was there despite everything.

“Yes?” My voice felt like smoke—wispy and thin.

“You trust me, right?” His voice wavered, and uncertainty crept into his usual confident demeanor.

Did I trust him? Could I trust him? The logical part of my mind, and Blair’s words, screamed no. But my heart held a different answer.

“I...” The word slipped from my lips but was swallowed by the tension between us all. Suddenly, Sadie stirred in her sleep, pulling everyone's attention away from me.

As Zachary cradled his daughter closer to himself and Blair stood rigidly beside him, Vincent kept his gaze fixed on me. His eyes were pleading for an answer only I could give him.

“I need some space.” I escaped his gaze as I stepped away from them. The chaos of their emotions was suffocating. Stumbling to the bedroom, I collapsed onto the mattress, crawling until I reached the headboard, sinking my head into the cool white pillow.

The room felt cold, too big, and echoed my own emptiness. My chest tightened as I lay still amidst the deafening silence. The hushed voices from the other room reached me, muffled and distant, yet they sounded unlike anything human. The bubbling tension was almost palpable. I could picture Vincent standing there, his handsome face hardened into a stone statue, Blair’s reddened eyes boring holes into him, and Zachary trying to play mediator while he comforted a stirring Sadie.

Tears welled in my eyes, blurring my vision. A part of me wanted to scream out in despair, to call Vincent back into the room so I wouldn’t be alone. But there was another part that needed this solitude. Except, it didn’t last long. Light knocks against the door caused me to inhale, kissing goodbye any alone time I hoped for.

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