The Intern

Chapter 43

Levi

This was where it started.

If I were to look back years later, after everything had gone to shit, I would remember this night. The start of it all. When I had allowed this man to get the best of me and unraveled everything in the process. The night I had given it all up for the sake of holding onto the memories of the past. Things I didn't need. Things I would survive without. And for all my faults, all my fuck ups, I would still see him as the cause of it all. This asshole that had the audacity to follow me out on stage and corner me into some fucking cock tease show that he just had to have now. In front of everyone. And most importantly, in front of him.

Eren.

He was staring up at me from the audience, looking like a deer caught in headlights, and I was willing to bet that he hadn't heard a damn word I'd just said. Or if he had, he didn't remember it now. He'd heard my voice just enough to turn and then that was it. It was gone. Once his eyes met the stage and he saw the man standing behind me, his mind had gone blank. I didn't have to talk to him now to know that. I could see it in his expression; hazed, lost, and torn. He was either trying to shut it all out or wrap his mind around the situation, and I wasn't sure which I wanted more.

And that was a fucking lie.

I knew exactly what I wanted and just how stupid it was. And yet I wanted it anyway.

I wanted him to understand. I wanted him to know just how much I needed this even when I couldn't comprehend it myself. I should have wanted anything other than to stay on that stage, and yet my mind kept turning back to a man I was supposed to hate. A man I should have been over by now, but for some shitty reason I just couldn't give him up. Even after all these years, and the past few months with Eren, I just couldn't turn around and walk away. As if he were nothing. As if we were nothing.

Even if I wanted that to be true.

"I trust you."

Eren could have twisted a knife in my heart and it would have hurt less than the sound of his voice uttering those three simple words. Words that should have snapped me back to my senses and propelled my body off of that stage as if the whole thing were up in flames. But I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything but stare at him and nod.

Because I wanted to do this.

I wanted this moment like I wanted to keep breathing.

And I hated myself for it.

"Tell me not to."

The words fell off my tongue as if they had no weight to speak of. As if they barely had the strength to make it past my lips at all. And I wasn't even aware I had said anything until I heard it for myself. It was like some small part of me was still trying to turn around. Trying to urge me away from a man that had dominated my life since the day I was born. A man who had taken my innocence and wrapped me up around his finger as if he owned me, pulling me tighter every time I tried to gnaw my way off. Even to this day, I was still fighting to get away.

And that was why I wanted him gone.

Not that I could ever tell Eren that and expect him to understand. He hadn't lived my life and had no idea of the kind of hold that Erwin had on me. It was nothing that I even wanted to share. Worrying Eren would just add to the shitfest that had become my life, and I wasn't about to do that. Revenge was just as good a reason as any, even if I knew I could survive without it. Either way, the end goal would be the same.

It would get Erwin out of my life, and that was all I wanted. I needed an end to this. Because every fucking day that I saw him was just another day that I felt the chains pulling at my heart. A heart that didn't even belong to him. A heart that I had given away, and yet I couldn't seem to stop myself from wanting this. Wanting what we had. Wanting all the things that would have been if he hadn't turned our world to shit.