Page 113 of Kiss Me Like I Didn't Kill You
When she pulls away, she looks unmoored, a little lost, and I know, with a clarity that terrifies me, that I will not let her go.
I don’t deserve her, perhaps I never did. But that won’t stop me. Whatever it costs, I will not lose her again.
Chapter 38
Ophelia
I manage to pull away from him, slipping through the doorway and into the corridor before my resolve can falter.
The click of the latch follows, and I know he’ll come after me. I can feel it, the inevitability of him, the pull I can’t escape.
So I move, fast, before my courage gives out.
My footsteps echo along the floor, through the dim dormitory hall, until the cold night air hits my face.
I’m trembling, my breathing ragged. Everything feels wrong, weightless, void. I can’t make sense of it, of what I’ve remembered… of what I’ve done.
Murderer.
The word drums against my skull.
I killed someone.
Even if I hadn’t meant to, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change the truth. It doesn’t dull the guilt clawing at my throat.
Rationally, I know it was self-defence, but the knowledge doesn’t make it easier to bear. The guilt still sinks its teeth in, refuses to let go, and I have no idea how to breathe around it.
They say your first kill breaks you, then hardens what’s left. My father says that often, as if it’s wisdom.
But he kills for a living. I don’t. I can’t. I was never made for this world, and he’s always known it.
That’s why he raised me the way he did, because in his eyes, I was weak, and naturally only ever meant to be a dutiful wife, not the one holding the weapon.
And perhaps he’s right. Because I don’t have it in me. And I don’t ever want to.
And then Arlo slips back into my thoughts, and I can hardly believe any of it, our love, our story, the impossible way we found each other despite everything set against us.
We were in love, madly, disastrously so.
And now I remember, the way he looked at me, the way I looked at him, how the world always seemed to fall quiet when he kissed me.
Even without my memory, I’d known we weren’t strangers… but I never imagined this.
And then what he did comes rushing back—the notes, the hatred, the cruelty… Zara.
It broke something in me.
Seeing him in that bed with her shattered whatever fragile piece of me was still standing.
And even through the wreckage, I finally understand why it hurt the way it did.
Because it was betrayal.
Because he was mine and I was his.
Because once, we were everything.
But none of it matters anymore.
