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“It’s okay, Hen. Truly.” Ily cupped my cheek and pressed her nose to mine. “You can say it. Here…I’ll teach you.” She smiled and gave me the sweetest, softest kiss. “Don’t think about what the words mean, and just say it…I love—”
“I can’t.” I groaned against her lips.
“You won’t, you mean.”
“No…I literally can’t.” Rearing back, I caught her sunshine-shining eyes. “I can’t say I love you when I’m not worthy of love.”
Her face softened. “Don’t you think I should be the judge of that?” Kissing my eyes, my cheeks, my forehead, she whispered, “I see what you are now. You did come for us. You’re going to free us. I know it—”
I choked and shot upright.
The dream shattered, leaving me blinking in a pitch-dark room.
My entire body screeched with discomfort.
I hated that Peter’s words kept haunting me but in Ily’s voice.
“I see what you are now. You did come for us. You’re going to free us. I know it—”
The rush of sickness coated my tongue; I launched out of bed. Wrapping my good arm around my bad ribs, I tried to hold my pain together as I half-ran, half-staggered to the bathroom, and flipped up the lid on the toilet.
My skin flushed with sweat.
I shivered with an icy chill.
I waited to vomit for the second time tonight.
Waited for that familiar curse to remind me all over again that the things I wanted were wrong and toxic and had to be purged.
How strange that my dreams had been full of love and togetherness instead of darkness and screams. How tragic that I’d finally begged for someone to see me, and I couldn’t stomach it when they did.
Breathing hard, the gush of nausea slowly faded.
I backed away from the toilet and crashed against the towel rail.
Ow.
Goddamn ow!
I couldn’t do this anymore.
I didn’t want to exist in so much agony, and I didn’t trust my sleep not to torment me.
I’m done.
Grabbing a white bathrobe off the hook, I lurched toward the exit. Shrugging into it, I ripped open our borrowed bedroom door and looked left and right.
Track lighting glowed above the flagstones. Faint and barely there, it granted just enough illumination to slip into the shadows and close the door behind me.
I wouldn’t be able to lock it, but I took the risk that Victor lived up here, and other guests wouldn’t be stupid enough to trespass.
I needed a book.
A thousand books.
If I could lose myself in their pages, then I could—
