Page 34 of The Freedom in Captivity

I ease my hands around her neck so she can respond.

“The only thing I ever lied about was my last name. I did love you, Flynn, and leaving you was the last thing I wanted to do.”

Lies.She still lies!

A red rage fills my vision and it takes every bit of willpower not to squeeze the life from her throat. “At least there’s that,” I manage, the replay of her words barely easing my torment. “I don’t believe you, but at least there’s that.” A contradictory statement.

“I’m telling you the truth,” she whispers, her voice lined with a pain that makes my own insides hurt.

Guilt. Motherfucking goddamn guilt. That can’t happen. I shake my head, trying to clear it.

Everything about her has brought me heartbreak. Before this week, I was happy with my life here. Content. And now I’m fucking conflicted.Shemakes me conflicted about the present and my past and that alone makes me hate her.

“Maybe,” I mutter, jerking away from her. “Whatever bullshit you spew now doesn’t change anything, Rozelyn. You’re a De Falco. I hate you.”

I give her my back, ready to leave this basement and my mistakes behind—her included.

“Are those your feelings toward me or my last name?” she calls out, pausing my quickening exit.

“Are they different?” I ask, an edge to my tone.

“Yes. My last name is the woman my father forced me to become. That’s what you’d hate. If you hate me, then it’s the girl you knew back then.”

The girl who gave me light only to cast me in the darkness again. The girl who made mefeelsomething for fucking once, who woke me from my daze for a short while, who gave me a sense of what life is like. That is who I hate because that’s the girl that promised me forever.

A normal breakup, I could have handled. After all, exactly as she said days ago, it was eleven-years-ago. We were idealistic eighteen-year-olds, even if, looking back, I could decipher the difference between dreams and the future. It’s not that she ended us; it’swhatshe said. How she left me.

Feelings I’ve long shoved away only to have dragged to the surface with her re-entry into my life. She’s a constant reminder of the misery she forced me into before Caterina helped me dig myself out.

“I protected you by not telling you the truth, but that didn’t mean I didn’t love you. I might have broken your heart that day, but I ruined mine too. It hasn’t beat normal since I said goodbye to you.”

Lies.

I need to get out of here.

Turning my back, I avoid the physical representation of guilt—her stuck in chains, naked, forced to stand until I release her back to the ground. I can’t look at her because then the unspoken thoughts in my head will formulate into sentences that I’d rather pretend don’t exist.

I exit the basement and flick the light off as I pass, leaving her in complete darkness again.

While she’s physically in darkness, I return to my metaphorical one.

* * *

If that visit was meant to keep the dreams away, it doesn’t work.

I dream.

Nightmares of that final conversation.

Flashes of every interaction.

Every time I had her naked.

It’s in those memories, old, buried facts slowly reveal themselves, granting me ammo to end her.

Game on, Rozelyn. Game fucking on.

Rozelyn

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