87. Our Love Story is Doomed for Tragic Endings

I refused to do anything with Resa the next night she hauled me up to that bedroom. She’s not Luc. She’s not Roman. She can’t compel me to anything. She can strip off my clothes and overpower me physically, being so ancient, but that gets her nothing of what she wants. It just gets me pinned to a bed, snarling in her face, calling her repulsive, trying to get her angry enough to execute me. She’s too controlled for that. She just locks me back in the dungeons instead and decides to cut off my food supply. The hunger pangs are worse than any outward torture of cuts and broken bones. The hunger pangs cannot be coped with. They don’t heal in a minute. They simply become more and more crippling, the longer I’m forced to endure without blood.

The cramps, and dizziness and agonized moans, turn to thrashing and self-mutilation by day four, as, completely rabid and incoherent, I break my hands to get free of the manacles just to wind up throwing myself pointlessly up against a solid steel door, over, and over, and over again. There’s not even the faintest whiff of human blood, not anywhere nearby, so the fight bleeds out of that feral animal relatively quickly. I wind up weakly shivering on the floor, burning red eyes staring blankly at the wall, until another shock of pain tears through my midsection, and I start madly clawing at the door again, breaking my nails and scraping my fingers right down to the bone.

The world becomes a haze of red, until something opens that door and enters my cell. I attack without thought, but he pins me to the floor with barely an effort, holding a blood bag right up to my face. I turn away from him in an instant and press that precious substance tight to my mouth. I keep licking at the plastic in thoughtless desperation, long after I’ve sucked in the last drop. He draws another packet out from a bag at his side, and I snatch it up, sucking it down, and then another, and…

I remember doing this with Antonio, the day Luc turned me. I have been nothing but this rabid creature, ever since that painful, debaucherous, and most self-destroying night.

My vision clears, and I finally process that this is not just a memory bringing him to mind. It is really Luc, crouched right there beside me, as I suck dry his delivered blood supply like a pathetic, shameless glutton. I lower the current bag when it’s only half-emptied, sitting up straight and looking numbly down at my dirt streaked limbs and filthy, bare crotch. “If you came to see a pathetic mess, congratulations. It serves me right, correct? For attacking them, being so--”

He pulls me close in a tight, near suffocating embrace, burying his face in the crook of my neck.

“You want me to shut up?” I fill in numbly, and he pulls back in an instant, brow knotted in frustration, and dewy eyes flooded with so much… grief, that I feel my heart twist.

“I suppose I’ve given you reason to always think the worst of me?” My guilt intensifies, and I look away. “I was not shutting you up. I was just trying to implement one of your strengths: abandoning words to express to you in a clear gesture instead how fucking relieved I am--”

“To see me not dead?” I murmur. “I can’t die, Luc. You know that, but I’m sorry you had to see that... starving thing,” I force out, rising to my feet and drifting over toward the still open cell door. “Sorry you had to come here. I guess…” I search the deserted hallway outside. “I’m free to go?” That makes me sigh all the heavier. “What did you have to trade in exchange?”

“Nothing. Gracen’s here.”

“Oh.” Resa is unaware she’s been nothing but Gracen’s powerless puppet these past four years, ever since she dared to threaten Leah and Ben.

“Exactly, so stop worrying about the Dulce and just… I’ve been writing you. Leah promised she’d deliver them, but… I suppose we know now, why none of us could find you. I’ll make sure Resa pays for--”

“No,” I cut him off coldly, still refusing to turn and meet his gaze. “Get me cleaned up and give me one last fuck, if that’s what you’ve so desperately been missing, but after that…” I turn numbly to face him. “You can train someone else, Luc. You can find some other naive kid. There will be someone out there who looks better than I do, who suits all your preferences but with none of my inadequacies. Find him, and try again. He’ll love you in an instant, and maybe then you could finally let me go.”

“I already let you go,” he grates, keeping his arms crossed, pulled back from me. “I didn’t exile you because I was angry, Jules. I could not stand to see you constantly hurting yourself--”

“You hurt me, Luc,” I coldly correct. “If I hurt myself worse in the aftermath… It’s the only control I have.”

“You have full control of your every action now, you unhinged mess! I set you free! Genuinely. But what do you do with that freedom?” He grabs me by the shoulders. “You just go on getting into trouble, and getting yourself hurt, and exploited… Damn it, Jules, I cannot let you do that. It is not about controlling you, but I just… I want you to be happy again.”

“Not possible,” I inform him flatly. “I’m not like you. I am not that amazing or strong.” He stiffens in surprise at the compliment. “Everything you endured… I can’t shrug it off and move on, or keep smiling…” I cup a hand to his cheek, voice breaking. “God, you really are incredible, Luc. Everything Roman put you through…”

“Don’t do that,” he grates, eyes hardening, as he slaps aside my hand. “Do not you dare pity me. You want to know how I ‘survived’, Jules? I became a monster, like you said, numbed to all of it. I could manipulate and pretend all I wanted, but I could never trust, or truly be alive again, not until you, you heartbreaking…”

The words catch in his throat, and he kisses me. I stand there cold and nonreciprocating, so it ends in a matter of seconds. “So find another me,” I earnestly tell him. “You always do, Luc. I’m not Claudia. I’m not Guillermo. No one’s taking me from you. You recovered from even those horrible traumas, and this won’t be a murder. There will be nothing here you need to avenge. You just have to let me go. You have Leah, and you can get by with her and all the other praels, until you find another sex doll perfectly tailored to your--”

“That you remember my every word is hardly endearing when it is only the fumbled compliments and criticisms you retain,” he cuts me off angrily. “You know how I keep going, Jules? How I function so very ‘amazing’. I live my life. We are still alive, so I will beg you, for the final time, **stop** fixating on the past. Stop replaying it in your mind, every second of the day, and know that five bloody years ago, when I called you my perfect sex-doll--”

“You meant it as a compliment, I know--”

“You *should* know that I misspoke like a thick-skulled idiot!” I stare at him, stunned. He never admits to being in the wrong. There’s always an excuse, a justification that I am an idiot for not perceiving without him even needing to explain. “What I meant to say that long ago night was that you are made for me.” He takes my hands. “There is no replacement. There will never be a replacement, no one else even comes close, because unlike you, I am not trapped inside a memory. That naive, blushing boy I first fell in love with? He is long dead, Jules.” I exhale. “I know that. I killed him. You have little to nothing in common with that Julian. You are **still alive** however, made new, and a part of the new you? I hate him.” My hands clench. “I hate him so fucking much, because of all the brutal work he has done to so deeply bury that boy instead of trying as I have been to breathe life back into that body, to bring back his optimism, his dreams, his trust. And the other part of this new you? The person standing right in front of me now?” Pathetic mess and disgrace is where I expect him to go, but: “I love him in a deeper, more meaningful way than I ever did that human painter.” I feel my breath catch. “You are fierce and strong, still talented, still beautiful, but you have grown and changed, and I… I want to be growing with you. I want to be the one to help you forward, not hold you back.”

That is all I ever wanted to hear these past few rocky years, but after what he did… Every word that comes out of his mouth is just a meaningless manipulation. He has always known exactly what to say when it comes to our breaking points. He always knows how to smooth it over, to win me back, and get me trusting him again… just so he can break my heart, the second it’s healed. “It’s too late, Luc,” I whisper, and his hands drop. I can’t even meet his eyes anymore, because I cannot bear to see that expression – the devastation of all hope evaporating and all fight giving out. “Nothing can grow without sunlight.”

“What a cheesy and ridiculous metaphor,” he counters. “You’re not a fucking plant.”

“And so the criticisms resume,” I mutter, and he clutches at my hand.

“I did not mean that as a--”

I pull back my hand, backing away, clear to the other side of the hall. “I don’t want to try and decipher what you mean. I don’t care if you intend it to be cruel. I cannot do this anymore,” I enforce. “I do not want to be set free of this place just so you can take me back to your coven, your bedroom. I want you-- I **need** you, to let me die.”

He slumps back against the far wall and sinks right to the floor, holding my gaze with eyes soft and earnest. “Alright, Jules. You win.” His voice breaks. “I revoke all my orders, every last command. You are free to… do what you must.” He draws my revolver out from under his jacket, holding it out to me, handle first.

I reach for it numbly, cradling it to my chest and avoiding his fixed stare. “You don’t have to watch.”

“Yes, I do. But I’ll follow you out.”

“You… what?”

“I’m not living without you. I have lost everyone I have ever truly cared for. I cannot survive another. This endless, immortal life... It is mainly suffering, like you said, so we’ll die together, Jules. Right here. Right now. Go on.”