Spades and Angels

We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone

It's a thin line between love and hate. Between feelings of romance and animosity. We knew we should have stayed away from one another after that first meeting in the bar but we were foolish. We didn't know how to leave well enough alone and now we're stuck.

We should have separated and never looked back but we didn't and before long were trapped in a world of half-truths, deals and feelings. All because we couldn't leave an obsessive thought alone. Both are to blame, both the cause of what happened when two worlds collided over an ignited flame of hatred and obsession mixed in with love....a love strong enough when we acknowledge it that it might just kill us all.

Lolita

My life used to be simple. I know, I know that's the most cliché thing to say but it's true. Yeah, I didn't have the best life but it was mine. I had a family, a future - even if one not that bright - and people who looked out for me. I had a path I was supposed to follow. Straight and narrow. simple.

Then he came into it.

Handsome, elusive and captivating from the moment he walked into that bar I knew something about him was wrong. The way he moved, almost as if he knew he was chasing something he shouldn't have been after. The way he skulked around the edge of my life, waiting until I noticed him more than he'd noticed me.

He kept chasing me though I made it clear I wanted nothing to do with Maddox Reyes or what he stood for. He said he just wanted to help, and going against my better judgments he eventually wore me down. Getting inside my head, inside other places too. Worming his way into me until I can't believe I'd ever be able to be free from him. Even if we let go of each other some part of me would remember what he did. What he chose to do for me, even if there were better ways to do it. I remember when it fell apart. Home wasn't great, that much was for sure but it could always get better. I had my family, my home, what I believed in. What I'd believed in for as long as I'd been alive and taught what was right. Living in a dollhouse of lies and cover-ups to keep the truth from coming out. From being found. But then it fell apart when he came in. Tearing down my walls, making it impossible to ignore him.

Some people believe in fate. Some in destinies and legends say that you find the person meant for you. That we have choices in this world, that love was possible to find all on your own. But after my experience, I'm left wondering just how much of it is our choice and how much is laid out already for us just to stumble into, unwilling or not.

Maddox

She was beautiful. Charming, sassy and a little of a temper problem but that didn't matter. She captivated me no matter what happened. When the others found out they warned me to abandon the search for her again. Something that given our closeness in town was hard but could have been done.

But I didn't.

I didn't give up looking for her, something driving me to keep looking for her. Caused me to return to that bar on the wrong side of town for someone like me, someone who could end up in a lot of trouble if the wrong people caught me. Never mind had they caught me staring at their prize queen, someone I didn't know who they were, and when I did? When I did that just made the infatuation worse. Obsession, lust, love. They all tangle but all join back to her. I know it's wrong to keep looking for her but she seems trapped. In pain. alone. Just like the girl I managed to save that night in the rain when I found her outside our meeting spot, huddled against the wall and shivering, eyes having a thousand-yard stare like she was recovering from something unspeakable. Both look the same. Both alone.

I know what happens, what I'll do, won't be right. I have faults, all people do, but I know what needs to be done. And when I found out what she did, what they did to her I was mad. So mad I lost it and followed that obsession as far as it would take me.

They say love makes us do crazy things, this one might just make me lose my mind if I follow it and her to its conclusion. Whatever that may be since I can't see the future no matter how much I try to.

He says he saved me. I know what I did was wrong. Both of us looking for something we thought we'd found but that was just a distraction. A way for us to avoid the future before it swallows us in two different directions.

He was my escape. My way out of a monotonous and poverty-stricken life that I said I wanted, but right from the start he gave me bad butterflies. Danger incarnate and the source of my subsequent obsessive thoughts. Something that wasn't helped by his continual appearances in my life. Never leaving a name, never telling me more than a few details I can't piece together. But I will find out who he is. I have to.

She was an angel, a dark one but one that still shone in the blackness of the mundane world. An obsession I should have curbed the second I felt it take route. Nipped in the bud and dealt with. But I didn't. I didn't and let it sit and spread, rotting and twisting. All I wanted was to help but now...now I'm worried I've unwittingly dragged myself too far down this road. Too far captivated by her charms to be free of her, even if we were to part. She's a Spade, I'm an Angel but I have to have her. I have to know her.

Love or lust. Fate or fortune. We ended up together because of a simple proposition of help in a situation that never should have happened. But there's something else that should never have happened. We should never have fallen for each other. No matter what else happened that should have been avoided. But we didn't and now...now we have to deal with the consequences. Good or bad. Peace or war.

I should never have fallen for him. I should have just let her be after that first time. But we both ignored the signs and now....now neither of us can say we hate each other, even if our worlds, our families say we should

Causing a war of power to start after one night on the wrong side of the tracks our paths crossed by accident which caused obsessive thoughts and a love that might just be the end of us. Call it fate or an unlucky coincidence but that first meeting in the bar on the wrong side of town ignited a burning flame, one we can't put out, no matter how hard we tried or what we did. Something we didn't see when we foolishly started messing around, just two kids pushing each other's buttons and ignoring the feelings it creates. not aware of what we were doing until it was too late.

Trying as hard as we could to stay on the right side of that line, but it was hard with the seductive power of falling over the ledge. Of stepping over and letting go, surrendering to the darker parts of ourselves and growing that small flame into an inferno of a dark love that keeps us. Like they say in all the stories.

After all, you know what they say. They all say that it's a thin line between love and hate.