I STILL LOVE YOU, BUT...

CHAPTER 22

COLIN

Amanda is standing on the shore, the wind whipping her hair, staring out to the sea.

"Amanda," I call out desperately.

She turns, her head a halo in golden honey light.

"I love you." I stumble to her, feet so slow upon the sand.

"You used to love me," I sob.

I pull her to me desperately, and her eyes stare straight through me.

I kiss her mouth and it's like kissing frost. I suck on her lips and it's like sucking chips of ice.

"You used to want me!" I scream.

"I love you," I cry. "You used to love me, Amanda!"

I jolt awake, and the dream drains away like water, Amanda's name raw in my throat, still trembling on my tongue.

Some nights I dream of her smiling, and I would recall the exact way her mouth curves and her eyes light up. And some nights, like tonight, I dream of her mute and still, her eyes blank and wooden, never saying a word.

The memory remains long after I awaken; the longing and the pain and the regret stain my heart, dull and heavy, impossible to shake off; the gray listlessness clings to my eyelids, my skin, my clothes, to air, to everything.

I had stupidly thought I could get her back. And insanely, this thought had kept me alive. This thought had kept me going.

Until I spoke to Tristan Remington, and he told me in no uncertain terms that that was all it had been --- pure delusion on my part.

I have been living on memories half-remembered and half-fabricated. I have been lost in an illusion, fantasizing that she loves me still, that despite everything I have done, she would forgive me in time, and take me back.

But something has given way, with that drunken confrontation with Remington.

Even a sleepwalker must open his eyes at some point.

Amanda doesn't love me anymore. She doesn't want me anymore.

She has him now.

She loves him.

And I have been an absolute fool for believing that she would take me back. It was a dream, dragged out of the depths of my despair.

The affair with Iris has burnt itself out. I have wasted so many days and weeks and months lusting after a woman who was not my wife. When I consider it now, the man I am now, with this heart that continues to beat wearily, monotonously on, I can hardly believe that that man who had lusted after another woman had ever existed. It had been an affliction, a madness. There is no other word for it.

Desire for Iris had consumed me, it had torn me apart, but the poison has finally bled out.

Lust has run its course.

Iris was like a stubborn splinter under my skin. I could not remove it --- and if I am being totally honest, I had not tried very hard to scratch it out. Instead, I had allowed it to embed deeper, root itself into me.

But, ultimately, sanity has triumphed. And it had taken leaving Amanda to slap sense and reason back into my fogged head. The look on Amanda's face, pale, like that of a ghost. The realisation that I had hurt her beyond words. That I had put that white, lost, broken look on her face. That the innocent, young, trusting look that I had loved so much was gone forever. And that she would never look at me like that ever again.

The bout of madness with Iris has ended. The demise had started the moment I walked out of my house. Here I am in the apartment I had rented for Iris and me almost a year later, and the game of treachery and deceit we had played behind Amanda's back is over. Iris and I are done.