chapter forty-five

I stared at my heart in my hands, contemplating the inevitable. Crushing it would be the ultimate act of self-annihilation, the solitary endpoint to a torturous existence. The past year of separation from Vanessa, condemned to silent solitude, had tested the limits of my resilience.

Hadrian’s unexpected compassion softened the edges of my despair, granting me the solace of observing Vanessa through the cameras he had surreptitiously installed in her home. At first, I reveled in the stolen glimpses, quenching my insatiable thirst for her presence. But as days bled into nights, my obsessive fixation grew.

Recognizing my downward spiral, Hadrian intervened, limiting my access to the feeds. Forced into the unfamiliar realm of daylight and routine, I found myself feeding, though the sustenance brought no solace. Sleep eluded me, replaced by relentless thoughts of Vanessa.

Every brushstroke on the canvas, every melodic note that escaped my lips, was an echo of her, a tribute to the forbidden love we shared. Her beauty, her intelligence, and her indomitable spirit consumed my every waking moment.

Yet, I knew the insurmountable barriers that stood between us. Saul’s murder, an act I had committed in a desperate effort to save Hadrian, loomed over my head like a malevolent shadow. Vanessa’s wrath, her indecision to end things, was a sentence I had to accept.

As I held my heart in my hands, the weight of it seemed both tangible and intangible. It was the physical embodiment of my love for Vanessa, yet it was also the source of my torment. To crush it would be to extinguish the flame of my existence, to release me from the agony that had become my constant companion.

But could I truly bring myself to do it? Could I end my own life, knowing that Vanessa would be left alone, haunted by the memory of her lost love and the knowledge that she was somehow responsible for my death?

No. Even in my darkest despair, I could not bring myself to inflict such pain upon her. I would continue to exist, a hollow shell of the man I once was, living on the fringes of Vanessa’s life, forever yearning for a love that was lost.

With a trembling hand, I placed my heart back in the case, a silent promise to endure the unbearable. I would continue to send her the paintings, the letters, the vials of my blood as a testament to the love that consumed me.

Perhaps, one day, she would find it in her heart to forgive me, to see beyond the darkness I had embraced. Until then, I would exist in this purgatory, a prisoner of my love, haunted by the memories of what once was.

And then, as if by some divine intervention, a light appeared in the distance. A figure emerged from the shadows, her presence a beacon of hope in the abyss that had consumed me. It was Vanessa, standing over me with an expression that I could not quite decipher.

“Where the hell are you going with my heart?” she demanded, her voice cutting through the silence like a knife. The fury in her eyes was palpable, a testament to the pain and anger that she had been bottling up inside her for so long.

I stared at her, unable to speak, unable to find the words to express the depth of my feelings for her. All I could do was hold my heart tighter as if by doing so I could somehow protect it from the wrath that was surely about to be unleashed upon me.

“You’re not allowed to leave me,” she continued, her voice a mix of anger and desperation. “Your heart and all of you are mine forever.”

I hissed at the pain that shot through my chest as she roughly grabbed my heart, but it was a small price to pay for the fleeting moment of connection with her that it brought. Her words hung in the air like a promise, a lifeline that I clung to with everything that I had left within me.

She left me there with just the sound of her heels against the concrete as she stormed away from me once again. But this time, something was different. A glimmer of hope had returned to me, a flicker of light that threatened to pierce the darkness that had consumed me for so long.

As she walked away from me, her back turned towards me, I could not help but marvel at her beauty. Even in her anger and frustration, she was a vision of loveliness that filled my heart with warmth and longing.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, I felt alive again. The darkness that had been my constant companion began to recede, replaced by a newfound sense of purpose and determination.

Vanessa had given me a reason to fight, a reason to live. And with every fiber of my being, I resolved to hold onto that reason with all the strength I could muster.

For even if she could not forgive me for what I had done, even if she could not find it in her heart to love me again, I would remain by her side forevermore. My heart belonged to her, and it always would be hers alone.