Descent (Black Heart Romance presents Heaven & Hell)

giving someone the ability to leave, you’re also stripping away their ability to choose you?”
A frown flickers across his face as if perhaps he hadn’t considered that, but it eases after a
moment and he smiles a very faint, self-deprecating smile. “Once they know the real me, who would,
anyway?”
My heart contracts with sympathy. Stupid, stupid sympathy. I’m certain he doesn’t deserve it
after the things he’s done to me, but his words put a knot in my stomach. Even though I know he
doesn’t deserve it, I hug him. Because I want to, and I understand. Everyone wants to feel chosen, and
I can certainly see why he makes that absolutely impossible. There are plenty of ways he’s appealing,
but plenty more ways he’s extremely problematic. He stands in his own way. His baggage is heavier
and more difficult than most, but mine’s a lot lighter, and I suppose I haven’t found that, either.
“My first boyfriend, I loved him with everything I had and then some. I was 17 and he was my
first love, but I wasn’t his. He was a nightmare, honestly. Even calling him a boyfriend was a joke, he
just used me over and over again because I let him. I think some part of me knew it even then. I may
have played the fool, but I wasn’t one. And no matter how much I gave, it was never enough. He was
a black hole, sucking up every bit of my energy and my happiness, but never giving anything back, and
a sane girl would have gotten fed up with that. She would’ve left.”
“You didn’t.”
I shake my head. “Nope. Stayed until he’d sucked me completely dry. He left me for someone
else.” I glance up at him. “Not one of my proudest moments.”
He shrugs lightly, not judging me for my youthful mistakes.
“And you’d think it would have been a relief. He sucked so much out of me, it probably saved
my life that he finally cut me loose. I’m not even exaggerating. Loving him sent me into some really
dark places, and I went to even darker places afterward because…” I swallow, unsure how deep into
this I want to get. “Worse things happened in my quest to obliterate that pain. But I wasn’t relieved. I
didn’t want to be set free. I wanted to spend the rest of my life in that dysfunctional prison with him.”
I look up and meet his gaze. “Why would anyone ever want a thing like that? But I was convinced I
could never love anyone else. It was him or nothing. There was no love for me if it wasn’t his, which
was all the more ridiculous because he obviously never loved me.”
“He sounds like an idiot.”
I crack a tiny smile. “Yeah. He was. But so was I. It’s an unkind thing to say about myself, but I
couldn’t have been more wrong about pretty much everything. Maybe I haven’t found what I’m
looking for yet, but I’ve built a nice life for myself. A life I never could have had with him. A better
life than his, too. I shouldn’t admit this, but I tend to check out ghosts from my past on social media to
see how their lives turned out. His is bad. He knocked up that girl he left me for and they’ve had this
ridiculous on-again-off-again relationship, the kind where you could see either of them impulsively
pulling a loaded gun and killing the other at any given time. Just drama and dysfunction and toxicity. I
guess he didn’t outgrow it. But I did, thankfully. I won’t say I’ve always made the best relationship
decisions, but I’ve never let anyone treat me that way again even though I really hate to lose people.