Page 95 of The Counterfeit Lover

But to think that she was so close to death…

I can't fucking contemplate that. Not now that I've found her—that everything seems to fit into place.

I may have severe memory gaps from my time in captivity and just as many illusions that I question on a daily basis, but one thing is for sure.

How she makes me feel. How shealwaysmade me feel.

Maybe it's silly to equate what I feel for her now and what we've been through with predestination. But that's exactly how it feels.

From the beginning there had been something. A spark of something just below the surface. But I'd been too stuck in my hate and those scenarios I'd built up over the years to see anything but whatIhad wanted to see.

Isn't that always the issue?

For someone who's always prided himself on logic and tangible facts, I inadvertently get too caught up in my feelings. To a degree, maybe this is all the result of years of conditioning, of pushing all useless emotions to the side so I could be what everyone wanted me to be—the perfect son, the perfect heir.

Just…perfect.

Too much time spent bottling up my feelings and I'm now left with a mess that makes no sense—with too much feeling that threatens to push me to the edge.

Because that's the truth.

I'm having a hard time dealing with a lifetime of pent-up emotion—of guilt, love, regret and despair.

I've always been good at compartmentalizing. That meant that I only focused on one thing at a time—one sole goal.

At first, that goal was to keep my parents happy. My love for them led me to push down who I'd wanted to be in favor of whotheywanted me to be, because the two couldneverco-exist.

Later, I'd drowned in my guilt, eschewing life in favor of perpetual penance for what I'd done to my brother.

That all came to a culmination in my hate for everyone who'd had a hand in the horrors I lived in captivity, swearing to make them all pay.

My tunnel vision had never allowed me to see things in anything but superlative.

Love. Regret. Hate. Everything to the extreme.

But there is one startling realization. It's never been for myself.

All my life I've lived for the wrong reasons. Always for someone else—always to please someone else.

There are only a handful of times when I'd stepped up, trying to do something for myself.

The first had ended in disaster when my only friend had ghosted me, making me spiral into a pretty bad depression. It had been one of the few times I'd opened myself to the outside world only to be thoroughly disappointed in the process.

But then there's Noelle. The one person in my life who always gave more than took, who never expected me to be anything but who I am. Loving her didn't negate any part of myself. It was never a burden. Only a reward.

If anything, it unlocked a part of myself I long thought lost—the one that could still dream.

Slowly, with her soothing presence, I'm starting to find myself again. Yet the drawback is that all the things I've kept buried under the surface are waiting to erupt.

"Raf," her voice wakes me from my reverie, and a smile tugs at my lips as I see her enter the room.

Noelle. My wife. The same woman who tended my wounds when I was beaten beyond recognition. The one who smuggled me food, water and medicine. The voice that kept me alive when hell threatened to overtake me.

It's her. It's always been her.

And seeing that necklace around her neck confirms that it wasn't a dream.

It's real, and she's here.

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