Page 64 of Bound By Threads
“I mean it, Piglet. I’ve always loved you, and when I thought you had died…”
“That wasn’t love, Crew,” she snaps, and suddenly her voice is sharp and clear. “What you did before? Hurting me. Calling me names. Making sure I knew I was nothing but the shit on the bottom of your shoe. Ignoring me when I was finally asking for help…” Her breath shudders. “That wasn’t love. That was cruelty. Ownership. A power dynamic I have no interest in playing anymore.”
I stand there frozen as she rips out the last piece of my heart because she’s not wrong. We ruined her. Played with her because it made us feel whole again, and lost her in the process.
“I could never love an addict.” Her voice is low… final, shredding the final part of me. “My dad became an addict because of my mom. She dragged him back in every time he decided to try to get sober, convincing him it was better to hide behind the haze of drugs than face reality, as painful as it was. Drugs robbed me of my life. I refuse to fall in love with someone, then not be enough when you realize the drugs are more important than I am.”
Then she walks past me, her breath stuttering as she practically runs out the door. The door slams shut behind her, her bag still on the table, laptop still open, headphones discarded.
She didn’t even look back, too desperate to get away from me.
I don’t blame her, not after everything.
I sink into the chair. My hands shake from withdrawal and everything else because she was right. That wasn’t love. It was control. Obsession. A desperate attempt to destroy something to make ourselves feel better.
I feel sick. Physically, emotionally, in every way that counts.
I press my palms into my eyes, trying to force the image of her trembling voice out of my head.
“That wasn’t love. That was cruelty.”
I can’t live like this anymore. I push out of the chair, away from the table, heart pounding. The walls close in for a second, the hunger already gnawing at me for more.
But I can’t keep doing this, and I know what I need to do.
No more. Cold turkey.
I’m going to tear it out of my system. Lock myself in a room and claw it out if I have to.
For her… for me, because I deserve to feel the pain. Maybe then I can understand how she felt.
We destroyed her, and maybe this is how I can start to put things back together—brick by brick, through the kind of agony she suffered. Agony, I spent years trying to escape until there was nothing left.
The door slams open,and the Marine is standing there, fury like fire in his eyes. His jaw is clenched so tight I’m sure it’s going to snap, his fists already balled at his sides. He doesn’t even take a second to breathe, just walks in like he owns the place. “I warned you what would happen if you came near her again. What the fuck did you do?”
I don’t move. Everything in me is numb, different from the kind I’m used to. This is a bone-deep ache that’s not going away, no matter how much I try to escape it.
My stomach turns, and for a second, I wonder if I’m going to puke.
I’m trying to say something—anything to make this right—but the words don’t come. How do I explain everything I’ve done to her? The poison I’ve fed into everything we did.
But instead, I crack.
I’m not sure if it’s withdrawals gnawing at my insides or the weight of the fact I fucked up again with her, but I break like glass. The pieces fall away before I can stop them, and I cry in front of a man who currently looks like he wants to break me in two.
“I drugged her,” I confess, the words coming out like gravel. “I swapped the brownie. It had weed in it.”
The silence that follows is suffocating, and I swear he’s going to kill me. He takes a step forward, eyes narrowing. “You… I’m going to kill you.”
“I thought if I could get her to talk to me, so I could figure out why she shut us out. Get answers so we can get closure…” My voice trails off, and I feel every single ounce of my guilt crash down on me at once when I realize how selfish I sound. “I thought I could fix it. I fucked up. I fucked up so bad, man. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You especially don’t get to ask those things from her,” he finally says, his voice low, lethal. “You don’t get to manipulate her so that you can feel better.”
I want to defend myself, but I know it’s pointless.
He takes another step toward me, his fists clenched, body rigid with restrained anger. “You’re pathetic, Crew. You need to get a grip of your life and leave Lottie alone. She’s doing better. She’s finally happy. Stop trying to destroy that just because you’re miserable.”
I open my mouth to apologize, but it’s too late. His fist connects with my jaw with a sickening thud. My head spins as I crash into the edge of the table. My vision blurs, and for a second, I’m disoriented, tasting the bitter metallic tang of blood in my mouth.
