Page 103 of Total Obsession

Did I care?

I tried to tell myself that I didn’t.

I tried to tell myself that he deserved this, but I wasn’t sure if that was quite right, either. At the end of the day, there was still a voice inside my head that whispered that this entire situation was my fault.

If you just hadn’t been cruel to him in high school, he wouldn’t have killed his father, he wouldn’t have become a hitman, he wouldn’t have wanted revenge on you, and you wouldn’t have killed that homeless man.

That was the other thing that was weighing on my mind. Most of my afternoons were spent sitting in the shower crying as my mind replayed the attack over and over again. I made sure that I turned the fan on and tried to keep my sobs quiet. It didn’t matter though, because Axe still knew.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he would ask me every time I got out of the shower.

“Fine,” I would say back to him, trying desperately to avoid any further conversation on the matter.

Except, the more I pushed it down, the more it tried to come back up. My mental state was deteriorating even as I tried to keep it together.

Each morning Axe would go to the vending machine and get us coffee and pastries. Each afternoon he would order something to be delivered from a nearby restaurant for lunch and dinner, leaving the cash outside the door so that the driver couldn’t see who was inside.

At each meal, he would try and talk to me, but I would always refuse to answer. After a week of going back and forth like this, he tried to change up his tactic.

“Zoey, please,” he started to say.

For the first time in a week, I opened my mouth to say something more than just “I’m fine.”

“What, Axe? What could you possibly have to say to me?”

He looked crestfallen. It was an odd look to see on his face, but one that he’d been displaying more and more over the past week.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But, I just know that you’re hurting, and I want to help.”

“Why do you think you could help? You’re the one that caused this!”

I knew that I wasn’t being fair. That voice was whispering in the back of my mind again.

That’s not entirely true. You’re partly to blame. This is your fault.

“I know,” he said. “And, I just want to try and make it right.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible,” I said to him.

“Can you at least let me try?”

I stayed silent. I didn’t have an answer for him.

“Please,” he begged. “Please, let me try.”

“What would you even do?” I asked him.

“Anything. Everything,” he said. “I just want you back. I’ve only ever wanted you. That’s why all of this came about.”

“That all sounds great and romantic, Axe,” I said to him. “But, it doesn’t really mean much.”

He sighed and slinked back into his chair.

He didn’t say anything else for the rest of the day.

* * *

The next week started much like the first. The only difference was that I refused to watch the television now. I didn’t want to know if people were looking for us. I didn’t want to hear what the tabloids were still saying about me. More than that, I was terrified to hear about police finding a dead body in an alleyway.

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