Page 43 of Unholy

“I just told you I loved you. That’s not something you laugh at, Tristan!”

“You can’t love me, Ash. No one can.”

“You’re wrong because I do. And you can take it and warp it in any way your mind wants you to, but that doesn’t change the facts,” she tells me.

“What are the facts, Ash?”

“That I love you. You have given me something I never knew I wanted. You’ve set me free, Tristan. Don’t you see that?”

“You know what I see? I see a little girl who lets her dad hit her because she still doesn’t know who she is. You’re standing in front of me now, lying to me.”

“I’m not. Not about this.” I toss the gun onto the couch and stomp toward her, gripping her face so hard it’ll probably leave marks, but I don’t care.

“You let him hurt you, Ash. That’s something I said never to let happen again.”

“It won’t.”

“It already has!”

“It won’t again.”

“You know, when I first saw you, I thought you were the one. I thought fuck, there’s the girl I’ve always wanted and couldn’t have. Then I saw what you let him do to you, and I thought, why? She’s so much more than this, why?”

“What are you doing, Tristan?”

“You’re never leaving me, Ash. Doesn’t matter how fucked up I am. Doesn’t matter if I hate you right now for letting him do that to you. Doesn’t matter if my fucked up brain tells me to hurt you worse than him. You’re never leaving!” I roar in her face. She flinches and tries to pull back, but I don’t let her. I walk her over to the bed and pull my hand from her face, tossing her body onto the bed. Then I climb up quickly, grab the rope, and secure it around her wrist and the headboard.

“What are you doing?” she asks as tears stream down her cheeks.

“I just told you.”

“You don’t have to do this, Tristan. I don’t want to leave.”

“We’ll see how you feel in a few days,” I tell her, making sure the rope is tight enough that she can’t get it undone.

“Tristan, please.”

“Don’t please me like I give a shit, Ash. Please means shit to me, and you know it.”

“Don’t do this. You don’t have to.”

“Oh, I have to.” My mind is a buzzing mess right now. There’s so much running wild that I don’t know how to calm it and make it stop aside from the fucking medicine, and I don’t plan on taking that.

I walk over and sit on the chair, resting my head in my hands and tugging at my hair. This has to stop, right? My mind has to slow down at some point. It can’t keep going like this. Can it? I’ve never felt like this before. This is new, and I fucking hate it.

I sit, listening to her pleas as I tug at my hair until I feel like I’m going to rip it right out of my scalp.

“Shut up, Ash! Just shut up!” I scream at her. This isn’t her fault, not really it isn’t. It’s mine. It’s my fucked up head that’s the problem right now. Maybe I need to call the Doc? No, fuck him. He’ll just want to shock me or some shit again, and that shit didn’t work last time.

I close my eyes now that Ash has shut up. I’m about to break down. I’m searching for a way out of my head. I’m falling apart, and I can’t stop it. What the hell can I do?

“I love you,” I hear Ash say once more. I cringe at her words. She loves me. Maybe she does, but I can’t see how. I’m not loveable. I’ve done things to her, things that would send her straight to hell, and that’s where I want her, in my hell.

I look up at her, staring at me. I stand from the chair and walk over, grabbing her shoes and pulling them off. Then I move to her jeans next to pull them off with her panties.

“Spread your legs,” I order her softly. She does as I say, and that makes me smile. She knows how to listen like a good girl, doesn’t she?

I scoot between her legs and slap my hand on her pussy.

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