Wicked Dance [Editing]

Twenty-Three

Contessina

My future had been decided before I was born, it had been chosen whether I liked it or not, having no opinion whatsoever.

All my life, I knew who I was supposed to be. Not who I wanted to be but who I was expected to become.

I knew I'd get married not for love but for convenience. I knew I'd have kids not because I wanted them but because there had to be an heir. I knew I'd have a family, love or no love, happiness or not.

I'd live, die, the circle of life.

Each day I breathed, I became more aware of all I wouldn't have but wished to have.

I knew and I got used to the lines that were drawn for me, I adapted, found the good and concentrated on it all, knowing that dreams were just that, dreams, figments of one's imagination, lies, impossibles.

Dreams were impossible just like this.

It was all a trickery, a lie, my desperation.

He didn't ask me to stay. It was just my head.

He didn't touch me. He hated me.

He didn't stop me. He wanted me gone.

He didn't beg. He would never beg.

I was not someone to beg for.

It was all in my head. A cruel dream. An illusion.

Maybe I've gone crazy.

Maybe the last five years haven't even existed at all. Maybe I'm still lying in the streets of Paris, broken, hollow, in agony. Maybe lightning struck me that night and I'm lying on the floor. Maybe- "Please stay."

The sound of his voice threads through the thoughts in my head, his voice as intoxicating as his scent, wrapping my mind, pulling my strings, making me lose a breath.

Please stay...

The cadence beat in my chest pulsed differently, quicker. Ten words, not eight, opposite to what he had spat out so many times at me. Leave. Go. Get out of my sight. You mean nothing to me.

Ten letters, so much, making the ache in my heart grow, making the tears fall much more easier. They slide down my cheeks, dropping to the floor, in front of him, they fall as he fell, suddenly but with reason.

My tears fall because this is too much. Because this is cruel but he falls because all he wants to do is hurt me.

I've met bad men. I know men that kill. That bribe. That sell. I know many types of men because of the world I was born into, even my father was a bad man but he wasn't cruel. Contrary to everything, my father loved me, he protected me, he put us- my mother and I- before everyone else.

He wasn't cruel. But he is.

Matteo is the cruelest man I've ever met.

Who was he to do this to me?

Only yesterday he was flirting with a woman while I sat next to him, pretending. Only hours ago was he going to bring her to this place, to this room and fuck her while I smiled at it all, feigning oblivion. Only hours ago was I a pretty thing on his arm, trying not to crumble, trying until it became too much.

Who was he asking me to stay after that? Without reason?

I could take the cold shoulders. The words. The silence. The indifference. Everything but watching him flirt with a woman? Eating and talking as if I didn't exist? It broke me, shattered me far more than any accident could ever have.