Passion's Pitfalls

Chapter 12

He looked pale, almost sickly, and there were dark circles under his eyes. His breathing was shallow and rapid, and his hands were clenched into fists. It didn't feel like she was a puppet anymore. She felt a deep sense of worry and fear. Something was wrong. "Are you okay?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Tristan's heart was racing as he looked at Aurelia. In that moment, he saw not just the woman he loved, but also the replica of the woman he despised. It was like looking at a mirror image, the resemblance so uncanny that it felt like a cruel joke. He hated himself for not listening to his instincts the first day he saw her, for ignoring the warning of his subconscious, for letting himself get so close to her but he was too distracted, too delusional and too innocent to have even imagined Aurelia's mother being his father's mistress. The woman who destroyed his family.

He felt the anger rising in him, mixing with regret and frustration. It felt as if he was seeing her for the first time. As if she was a stranger to him, someone he couldn't recognize. The woman he had loved was gone, replaced by this -who the hell is she?. He couldn't understand how he felt she had changed so much, how she could be so different from the person he had fallen for. He felt like he had lost her, like she was slipping away from him.

But he doesn't care.
He doesn't.

"Why are you here?"

Tristan's question hung in the air, heavy and accusatory. Aurelia looked at him, her eyes wide with confusion and fear. She could feel the tension in the room, and it made her want to cry. "I came here because I wanted to see you, and I missed you, and I was scared when I heard noises...," she says, totally clueless of what was welling up in his mind. "Tristan. Please, tell me what's wrong." She could see the anger on his face, but she couldn't figure out why.

Tristan's words were sharp and full of pain.
"You don't get it, do you?" he hissed, his voice dripping with contempt. "You come here, into my home, and you act all innocent and clueless. But you knew what you were doing. You wanted to stick it to us, to rub it on our faces, to remind me of what my father did to my mother, because of your mother? It's sick, and I can't believe you would do something like that."

Aurelia was reeling from his words, the hurt in his voice cutting through her like a knife. She wanted to protest, ...but the words stuck in her throat. She felt her eyes welling up with tears, and she bit her lip to stop herself from crying. She knew that Tristan was hurting, and she felt terrible for causing him pain -did she even actually cause him pain? it wasn't her fault. How could it even be her fault?

"What do you mean?" Her voice, icy.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. You know exactly why you came here, why you applied for this job. You wanted to be near us, my family, because that was what your mother did, you wanted to stick it to me. You wanted to bring up my father's past and make me, my mother all suffer for it, you wanted to remind us...And now you're acting like you don't know what I'm talking about? That's pathetic, and I'm not going to stand for it."

Aurelia felt her heart breaking as he spoke, his words cutting deeper with every syllable. It was like a floodgate had opened in her mind, and all the memories; the day she also found out about everything came rushing back. She remembered the way Tristan had looked at her, his expression a mixture of fear and longing as he hugged her, the way he had trembled as he told her about his past, his voice shaking with emotion. she remembered the moment he had said the words "I love you", and how she had felt like her heart was about to burst the day she saw the yellow photograph in the library, midst the worn out pages of it. -that was the day she should have left. Her 'little' secret wasn't going to hide for long, and it didn't.

"I had no idea about any of this," she finds her voice. "I swear, I didn't know anything about you or your father or my mother being in the triangle. I didn't even know you lived here.." she looks at him, her words hung in the air, heavy and full of sincerity hoping he could see the truth in it.

His shoulders slumped as he sank to the floor, his head in his hands. He looked small and defeated, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. He let out a deep sigh, and Aurelia could hear the pain in his breath. She wanted to reach out to him, to comfort him and tell him everything would be okay. But she knew that would only make things worse. He needed space.

His voice was like ice when he finally spoke, the words cutting through the air like a knife. "You need to leave," he said, his words harsh and unforgiving. "You can't stay here. I don't want you here. You're a liar, and I can't trust you. You're only here to hurt me, and I won't let you do that. Go back to where you came from, and leave us alone." Each word felt like a punch to the gut, and Aurelia struggled to hold back her tears. She knew she had to leave, she must, there's no way she would stay.

The dormant anger rose up within her, and she felt like she could explode. "Fuck you Tristan," she spat, her voice shaking with rage. "You're the most self-centered person I've ever met. You only care about yourself, and you're blind to anyone else's feelings. You don't know anything about me, and you don't care to learn. You just make assumptions and jump to conclusions, without any regard for the truth. So I'm not going to take your accusations lying down. I'm not going to let you push me around anymore." She could feel her pulse racing, her chest heaving with emotions. She wanted to scream, to let all of her anger and frustration out. But she knew that wouldn't solve anything. She had to be the bigger person, even though it was the last thing she wanted to do. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. But the hurt and the anger were still there. Where could they go?

She looked up to met Tristan's blue eyes, she felt a wave of sadness wash over her. This was it, the end of their relationship. There was no going back, no way to salvage what they had. It was all over. And as she looked at him, she saw that he knew it too. It was as if all the light had gone out of his eyes, and they were now dark and empty. She could feel her heart breaking, as she realized that he had lost her, or maybe she had lost him.