Page 72 of The Loathing

“Amora, I don’t want to leave… I swear to you. But I have no choice, your father has made sure of that,” his voice cracks and I feel my heart drop from my chest.

“Then don’t.” I sit up, my red rimmed eyes volleying over to him and seeing his hard expression fade into concern.

“Baby,” he whispers pacing over to me, his thumb wiping a rogue tear that slips down my cheek, catching it before it has a chance to fall into nothingness and dissolving.

“Please don’t leave me,” I whisper because saying those words out loud would break me.

“Little red…”

“Please Titus…” my voice cracks and I stand, my fingers wrapping round his shirt, clinging onto him as if he was the only thing that could save me, just like the oxygen I so urgently needed. I needed him like the air that I breathe.

Titus closes his eyes, his forehead pressing into mine and it doesn’t matter how much I try to stop them, the tears fall.

“Please don’t cry Twilight,” he whispers, the thickness in his voice showing me that he is finding this just as hard as I am.

“Then don’t leave me.”

He opens his eyes, they burn into mine and I hadn’t even noticed, but his hand is cupping my face, my fingers subconsciously wrap around his wrist, holding him there because his touch is the only thing that feels real to me, the only thing that reminds me of these feelings that this beautiful man makes me feel and the thought of never having his hands on my skin again makes me feel utterly devastated, to never know what it was like to kiss him, to have him see me as something other than a young damsel in distress that needs a knight to ride in on his white horse and save her from the burning kingdom at the hands of her father.

But the sad truth was, I would never know what that would feel like.

Because Titus wasn’t going to be the one to save me.

“We’ve got to go for dinner,” he whispers, lifting his hand from my face and I choke on my intake of breath at the loss of his touch.

I nod, unable to piece two words together.

How stupid was I to fall for the bodyguard.

How stupid was I to think that this would work out for me.

How stupid was I to think that my father wouldn’t sabotage this at any given moment…

How stupid.

I walk alongside Titus, our fingers brushing just enough for me to be able to get the bolt of current that I so desperately crave, the tingling and stimulation radiating through to my core making heat blossom between my thighs. We don’t exchange words, and with each step closer we get to the dining room the more my heart races in my chest.

This is last time I will sit next to him at the dinner table and I can hardly take it, how could I have been so silly to fall hard for a man I hardly know.

I never believed in love at first sight, but here I am, living proof that it happens.

We were just wrong time.

We were not meant to be together.

Our universes didn’t align, our constellations not matching.

We were not meant to be.

I don’t know what makes me pause outside my father’s office, but I do and I hear his voice.

Stepping forward, the door is slightly ajar, and I peep through seeing my father pacing up and down his office, one of his fists balled, the other gripped round his phone.

“It’s a deal Wolfe, you can come and collect her tomorrow.” I stumble back, my blood running cold at what I had just witnessed.

“Dad…” I hear Ezekiel’s voice, and when I turn round to look at Titus his fists are balled, his jaw clenched and wound tight.

I shake my head from side to side as if in disbelief and that’s when rage blurs my vision, a high pitch ringing echoes through my ears and I feel disorientated, but I know it’s due to the rage. This is how it comes on, and once that red mist hits, everything else fades out. I am an Archibald after all.

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