Dark Desire

Chapter 43

It had been three days since I last spoke to Rose. Three days since the moment I saw that gun in her hand, something that didn't belong in the world I had created for her in my mind. But in that moment, with the cold steel in her grasp and the anger in her eyes, I saw someone I didn't recognize. The person I thought I knew had vanished, replaced by someone who terrified me.

I couldn't get the image out of my head. I had replayed that scene over and over, trying to make sense of it. 

But what hurt more was the fact that she had pushed me. I had never seen her so angry, never felt her so strong. She had shoved me with such force that I fell, crashing to the floor with a thud that still echoed in my ears. Her eyes shot invisible shots of bullets straight at my heart. The physical pain had faded, but the emotional wound was still raw. How could she do that? How could she push me away so violently?

And yet, despite everything, I missed her. I missed her laugh, the way her eyes sparkled when she was happy. I missed the sound of her voice, the way she would say my name with a softness that made everything else fade away. But now, all I could hear was the silence that hung between us, heavy and suffocating.

I wanted to reach out to her, to ask her why she had the gun, why she had pushed me away. But every time I picked up my phone, my hand would freeze, the words I wanted to say caught in my throat. I was angry, too—angry at her for keeping secrets, for hiding things from me, for pushing me when I was only trying to help. The anger and the longing warred within me, leaving me restless and exhausted.  

I left the workshop feeling more lost than when I had arrived, the weight of the past three days pressing down on me with every step. The streets were quiet as I walked home, the fading light casting long shadows across the ground. I couldn't help but wonder where Rose was, what she was doing, if she was thinking about me as much as I was thinking about her.

When I reached my apartment, the silence was deafening. I sat down on the edge of my bed, staring at my phone, the screen dark and empty. I wanted to call her, to hear her voice, to ask her why. But the anger and the hurt were still too fresh, and I couldn't bring myself to dial her number.

Instead, I lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, my thoughts spinning in circles. The image of Rose with the gun, of her pushing me away, kept replaying in my mind, over and over, until I thought I would go mad from it. I didn't know how to move past it, how to reconcile the girl I loved with the one who had hurt me so deeply.

As the night wore on, exhaustion finally began to pull me under, but even in sleep, there was no escape. My dreams were filled with fragments of that afternoon, with the look in Rose's eyes, with the cold metal of the gun, with the sound of my own voice shouting her name. I woke up in the early hours of the morning, my heart pounding, my body drenched in sweat.

The room was still dark, the silence thick and oppressive. I sat up, running a hand through my hair, trying to shake off the lingering remnants of the dream. But the unease remained, a constant companion in the darkness.

I knew I couldn't keep going on like this, couldn't keep pretending that everything was fine when it clearly wasn't. But I also knew that facing Rose, talking to her about what had happened, was going to be one of the hardest things I'd ever done.

We all have parts of ourselves that we keep hidden, even from those we love. But that doesn't mean those parts define us.

I thought about Mr. Robin's words, about how people are complicated, how we all have parts of ourselves that we keep hidden. Maybe that was true for Rose too. Maybe there was more to her than what I had seen that day, more than the anger and the fear.

But even if that was the case, I still didn't know if I was ready to face it, to face her. The pain was still too fresh, the wound too deep. And so, for the time being, I remained in the darkness, waiting for the dawn, hoping that when it came, it would bring with it some semblance of clarity.

But until then, I was stuck in the silence, with only my thoughts and the memory of Rose to keep me company. And in that silence, I realized that no matter how much I missed her, no matter how much I wanted to go back to the way things were, nothing would ever be the same again.