The Wrong Kind of Love

“Save me your chivalrous bullshit. This is to protect you, not me.” She snatches the paper from the table and shoves it against my chest. “You did this. You took any hope I had of ever having my life back and destroyed it.” She removes her hand and the paper falls to the floor.

And I hate myself for getting to a place where I’m weak for her. “Just deal with it, Tor.” No sooner do the words leave my lips than her palm hits the side of my face. Heat floods my cheek, stinging like a motherfucker.

“Deal with it? Deal with it!” She grabs my mug from the table. Coffee splatters everywhere when she chucks it against the wall. “Sure, I’ll just deal with the thought of my sister crying over a closed casket with a body inside that isn’t mine.”

Nothing about this is easy or fair. Some people earn their lot in life, and others get screwed. Tor didn’t earn this.

The only sin on her hands is that she dated the wrong guy and got caught in the crosshairs of my shit.

She takes dishes from the counter and smashes them on the floor, then grabs a glass. She launches it at me, but misses. That temper of hers is on form today.

“I’ll deal with losing the career I killed myself for!” She throws the fruit bowl, and that pisses me off because it was my grandmother’s. “I had published research and papers, and it’s all just...gone. Stolen.”

She moves from the kitchen to the living room, ripping every single painting from the wall.

Eventually, she runs out of things to break and grabs the cushions from the sofa. She gives them an exaggerated throw in my direction before she slumps to the floor, small and broken. And damn, does it break my heart.

“What now, Jude?” she sobs. “What am I supposed to do?”

Here goes the shittiest part...

I take the ID from the table and cross the room, holding it out when I stop in front of her. “You leave.”

Victoria

Leave.

One word that should represent freedom, but now only feels like rejection. This man has destroyed everything I once was.

I snatch the ID from Jude’s hand, refusing to look at him as I push up from the floor.

“Go pack whatever you want,” he says. “I’m taking you tonight.”

I want to shove him, hit him, hate him, but instead, I brush past him without any acknowledgment.

I slam the door to his room and toss the ID to the dresser, wanting to scream.

My entire life, I busted my ass. I worked hard and studied. I did everything by the book. Didn’t stay out too late. Didn’t talk to strangers. And yet, here I am. Kidnapped. Tortured. Screwed in the head. And now dead. And worse than all that is the sting of betrayal from Jude. Because I should hate him for everything he’s done, including faking my death, but I want him. I want him to hold me and tell me it will be okay. Instead, he gave me a freaking ID and told me to leave.

Nothing about this is okay.

I go into the closet and yank clothes off the hangers to get dressed, then snatch the ID.

It’s a student visa for Sarah Jones from Cornwall, England, with my picture in the corner. Sarah Jones…he couldn’t be a little more imaginative? Fucking Jude–I don’t even know his last name. God, what am I doing? This is for the best. Whatever is happening with me and Jude is toxic at best and some warped kind of Stockholm Syndrome at worst.

I pocket the ID then cut through the house, fighting the urge to knock on Caleb’s door and say goodbye. Stop normalizing this crap, Victoria. These people are not your friends.

Then why does that thought feel like a lie?

Jude’s not in the living room, and that’s just fine. I don’t want him to stop me. But, of course, when I go through the front door, I find him sitting on the front step with wisps of cigarette smoke hanging over his head.

Something tugs at me when I go to move past him, a magnetic pull trying to draw me back to his side.

“What are you doing, Tor?” he asks, sounding more annoyed than anything.

“Leaving.”

I hear him blow a stream of smoke through his lips. “I said I was taking you tonight.”

“I don’t need anything from you.” But I want everything. Which is exactly why I’m leaving. Right now. I start down the steps, fighting back tears.

“That’s ten acres of thick pine… You sure Your Majesty can handle it?”

I give him a middle finger as I start across the lawn. The sun scorches my skin, and as soon as I reach the shade of the tree line, I stop. I glance back at his house, forcing my thoughts to shift from Jude to the wreckage of a future that now lays before me.