Page 337 of Coal Hearts

Truths of darkness and wrongness and sin.

Everything was black inside me.

Tangled inside me.

I cringed as I kept running.

All my life, I thought I was normal. Normal when it came to sex and love.

I enjoyed a kiss and a cuddle.

Sex in a bed and the occasional experience in the back seat of a car.

I rarely self-pleasured, and if I did...my fantasies stuck to nice men, nice touches, nice—

I’m nice.

I am.

But if I liked nice things and swore I was a nice girl, then how the hell could I be so sensitive, so wet, so violently thirsty for more.

Stop it.

You’re confused.

You’re hurting and lost and desperate.

Yes.

Desperate.

I was desperate.

So, so desperate.

To leave.

To run.

To go home.

Yet somehow that desperation had twisted into something sick. A sickness that turned me...how did Victor put it? Sweet but psychotic?

God, am I the crazy one?

Would I destroy myself before I stood a chance at destroying him?

God, him.

Damn him.

Smite him.

I hated that my soul shivered whenever Henri spoke.

I despised that my body turned molten the moment he touched me.

Soft or hard. Gentle or abusive.