chapter 4

I didn’t remember how I got back to my office. Didn’t remember how I got through the day. Everything was a blur, I nod at the right time, smile on appropriate situations, answered a clipped yes and keep my voice as cheerful as I dare without breaking down and cry my heart out right there and then.
Seeing him again had unwind me. I don’t know what I was feeling. But deep down I always knew that I would see him again. I try to focus on work at hand; we were expecting a stock delivery later in the evening. I look around at my book café. This was my dream. Not long ago, I stood at this very door, trying to pick the pieces of my broken heart, running away from the life I had with him. Bury myself in work to dull the pain, hoping beyond hope that it would go away. Today, I realized with a jolt that the pain never goes away. My feelings for him lay dormant in my heart, waiting..Just waiting for him to come home to me again. Did I really love him that much? I contemplate the question, almost afraid to know the answer. God, I can’t do this. I pick my LV and went home.
The house felt cold. The floor creaks with my heavy footsteps. I need my supply of chocolate. I thought. I drag myself to the kitchen, place my LV and keys on the counter top and make myself a cup of hot chocolate. I sat hugging my knees, clutching my mug of chocolate for warmth and stare into space. He feels like another lifetime away. So far yet heartbreakingly close.
I close my eyes and saw his tear strained face, agony on his chiseled profile. We used to be so much in love. What happened to us? I used to brood over that during those lonely nights without him, but in the innermost part of my heart I know that what happens to us was him.
He changed.
I remember that fateful day as if it was yesterday. It was drizzling and wet and the wind blows a little too hard. He knocks on my door looking thoroughly despondent. He was soaked to the skin. I try to help him inside but he pushes my hand away. That should have given me some inkling that something was very wrong with him. But I was too busy worrying the fact that he was leaking all over my doormat to notice.
“What..”
I never finish the sentence as he tosses me and pinned me to the wall. Both his hands gripped mine. His face contorts with anguish, his breathing uneven. There was this mad gleam in his eyes that I couldn’t comprehend.
“Nick. You are hurting me” I cry hoping he would come to his senses. But he just ignores my appeal. His hands probing, his mouth crushing mine hungrily. I try to push him away but he was too strong for me. Tears sprung to my eyes. How could he do this to me? Hopelessness spread like flood through my vein. My legs felt like jelly underneath me.
“Nick please, don’t do this to me” I try to reason with him. But my plea fell on deaf ears. He rips off my night gown with a single rupture, his mouth trailing little kisses along my jaw line down to my neck. His hand stroking my bare back, moving down to my more intimate part of the body. I shudder, my body tremble uncontrollably.
“No. Please don’t..” I implore to the stranger in front of me. This cant be Nick. I thought desperately. Nick wouldn’t hurt me like this.
“I want you. I want you so badly”
He murmurs. His voice harsh and resolute. That sent a shiver to my body and stops me cold.
And then he carries me to my bedroom, dump me on the bed and start undressing. His bloodshot eyes caressing my now naked body. I close my eyes, willing, praying, hoping that this was all a bad dream. But it wasn’t, I feel his hands on me again. “God..” I could only pray. I struggle to break free but he tightens his arms around me and pinned me down. A single tear escape, he wipes it away. Kissing me again with renewed intensity, blind passion in his eyes.
I plead, I cry, I reason with him but to no avail. The monster before me was indifferent and unfeeling. He thrust deep inside me. Moaning my name, gasping and panting his own gratification.
If I ever suffer such searing pain as this, then I couldn’t remember it. Tears sprung again to my eyes. This time they wouldn’t stop. They stream down relentlessly, unashamedly as if trying to cleanse my now tainted body.
After that, he takes me into his embrace; hold my face into both his hands, his thumb caressing my jawbone and then he says he was sorry.
I was just numb; my body sore at places and my head wouldn’t stop spinning. How could he? I keep asking that question over and over in my mind. I feel so desolately loss but strangely detached; as if I step out of my own body and watch someone who look a lot like me broke into thousand little pieces that can’t be put together again.
I didn’t answer him, I just hold myself tightly, clamber into a ball staring into bleak nothingness in front of me.