I hurt in places I didn’t know could ache—my ribs, my temples, my spine. But nothing compared to the throbbing in my chest. It was a hollow, gnawing kind of pain. The kind that made you question your own sanity. I should’ve stayed away from him. I knew what he was capable of. Every warning sign screamed in my face, but I wasn’t right in the head—not anymore. And the more he pushed me away, the more I craved the bite of his attention, his cruelties like a drug I couldn’t quit.

I told myself I wouldn’t seek him out again. Hoping that a man like him could feel even an ounce of what I felt was laughable. He wasn’t made for love. He was cold. Calculated. A killer without a conscience. A psychopath whose darkness bled into everyone around him. The longer I stayed in his orbit, the more fractured my grip on reality became.