“I was cocky. I thought nothing and no one could touch me. I was very wrong.” His eyes were glassy and his voice wooden.
The weight of all his words dropped me to the ground in front of him. A tear escaped and landed on the carpet between us. There was more, so much more he was omitting.
“I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t handle it, not after... I tried, I did. I failed miserably when not even a month back in, I exploded in the court room.”
His eyes met mine. His look was pleading, begging me for understanding.
“But you’re not a prosecutor anymore,” I observed.
“Do you think that matters, Lila?” he asked. “This condo? It isn’t even under my name. Because I’m still alive.”
There was a shift, and calmness took hold of him. It was eerie, and I assumed it was from years of hiding from everyone. He just flipped the switch and that was it. Topic ended.
His gaze bored into mine, and I felt oddly exposed. It was like he was opening me up, seeing everything that I was…or wasn’t.
“Why are you so empty?” he asked.
I stared at him, stunned.
“I can see it as clear as day. It’s one of the many things that drew me to you. You’re empty. You wear a mask to hide it, to make yourself seem somewhat normal, but your face… Do you know how expressionless it is when you think no one is looking? I provoke you to get some kind of reaction, like you provoke me to feel. Have you ever been happy?”
I was bombarded with question after question, and my anxiety started clawing its way through my being.
“Is that why you chose law? Contracts in general, because it’s cold with precise guidelines? The people at the office don’t see it. They think you’re frigid, but I know you have a loving soul. The problem is you were never shown love, right? That’s very cruel, to grow up without love,” he stated with a cool tone, his eyebrow quirked in curiosity.
“Shut up!” I jumped to my feet, my fists clenched at my sides, my eyes blazing. I felt like a cat; the hackles standing on my neck, baring my teeth as I hissed. It was like he was poking me with a stick, and I wanted to swat at him to get him to stop.
He stood and walked over to stand directly in front of me. “Why? Because you don’t want someone to point out what you’re lacking? That’s why things failed with you and Andrew, isn’t it? He couldn’t take your darkness, couldn’t fill your void. He seems like the type to want to fix something that’s broken.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I screamed, my fists beating against his chest.
He needed to stop, I needed him to stop. How? How did he know what no one else knew?
I can’t stand to look at you.
No one will ever want you. No one will ever love you.
I hate you. I never wanted you. I was dumped with you.
You. Are. Nothing.
“Please, it hurts!” I moaned, my heart shredding inside me.
“Why?”
“Because I was never wanted, I was never good enough, never smart enough, never loved! He hated me; I was in the way of his happiness, shackled to him.”
Their words were running through my mind on a loop. All of the things they had said to me my whole life.
I wish you’d never been born.
No one wants you here, you should just leave.
“He hated that my mother died and forced me upon him: a child he never wanted from a woman he knew for a day. The things he said, the looks he gave…so many times, he wouldn’t even give me that. It hurt more than when he smacked me or grabbed me and yelled. Those were the only times he ever touched me. He was my father. He was supposed to love me. Protect me!” My chest felt like it was ripping as I spilled my darkest secrets, showing him just how much I was lacking.