A Vow Of Hate

by James, Lylah

  “Because I didn’t want you to choose me,” I bellowed, lunging off the bed. I stood on unsteady feet, practically swaying. My left leg jerked, a muscle spasming up my calf and into my knee. “Don’t you get it, Killian? I didn’t want a happily ever after with you. Not after what happened. Not after my sister… I couldn’t.”

  Killian released a bitter laugh, filled with venom and sorrow. I swiped my tears away. “Marrying you was supposed to be my repentance.”

  His body tensed, the muscles of his shoulders growing rigid. “That was where you went wrong. I’m not your atonement; I never was.” He shook his head, his jaw tight and dark eyes violent with rage. “It was always about self-loathing. I was right, you have a penchant for pain. You needed to somehow alleviate your guilt. So you thought the best way to hurt yourself, to destroy yourself was to marry the man you loved but have him hate you. Self-destruction.”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I choked, my hands shaking so bad I didn’t know how to stop my tremors. There was an insistent tingle growing inside my body. It slithered through my arms, burrowing into my chest and then down to my legs. My toes were starting to feel numb.

  “If it’s sympathy you want, you won’t get it from me,” Killian said flatly, devoid of any humane emotions.

  “Pity is the last thing I want from you,” I cried. My heart hammered in my chest and my body felt out of sorts, odd and detached. My emotions were in turmoil, but my brain didn’t seem to register them.

  The warning signs were clear, but I was too slow at recognizing them. Too lost in this moment, in the madness in Killian’s eyes and the unmasked sorrow in his voice.

  He advanced toward me, his steps slowed and measured, almost like he was trying to remain in control. “It’s ironic how you called me out on my rage; you said a lot of things about how I can’t deal with my issues, therefore I was taking them out on you. You fucking preached about how problematic I was. That I was the reason for my own unhappiness. But yet, we are so alike. Goddamn it. You’re self-destructing and bringing everyone else down with you,” Killian snarled. “You are no better, Julianna! Huh, how ironic, is that?”

  My whole body flinched at the cruelty of his words, their hostility. I wanted to scream that none of it was true… that I wasn’t self-destructing. That he was wrong.

  But it would just be another lie.

  Killian read me like an open book and he clawed out all my insecurities, all my thoughts and ugly emotions. He tore apart my pages and forced me to bare myself completely open, before shoving my own words back into my face.

  He saw me.

  Like he did three years ago.

  Killian saw the real Julianna.

  The one who was tormented by the ghost of her sister. The one who succumbed to the disease that was guilt. Cursed with memories that were moored inside of me – my sister’s bloodied and mangled face. A soul that howled in despair, a resentment that had burrowed itself inside my bones and sorrow that was too heavy to carry.

  Atonement was only an illusion that I was desperate to believe in.

  With each step he took toward me, I moved back. But he quickly erased the distance between us, pushing me into the wall behind me. The room still smelled of sex and our arousal, but it was his scent that engulfed me. Musky and earthy.

  “You were in that car with her, I get it. You watched your sister die, I get it. It was traumatic for you, I get it. You suffered physically and mentally, and you’re guilt-ridden, I. Fucking. Get. It. But that doesn’t give you the right to play with me and my feelings, to deceive me or to make me mourn the woman I loved when she wasn’t even dead!” His palm slapped over the wall beside my head and I flinched, hiccupping back a sob.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, so softly the words were barely audible.

  Killian pulled away quickly, as if I had burned him with my words, with my apology.

  I wished I could tell him just how sorry I was, but where to begin? The only thing I could mutter was a useless sorry.

  “Did you even love me? Was anything that we had even real, Grace?” He shook his head, smiling bitterly. “Sorry, I mean… Julianna.”

  “I didn’t fall in love with you,” I whispered. His dark eyes flared and his chest rattled with a shuddering breath. The torment on his face killed me. It shattered whatever was left of my already broken heart.

  I dug my nail into my thighs, feeling the burn. The pain kept me grounded. “I plummeted into chaos because your love was everything beautiful and pure, but my love was everything deceitful and destructive. So, I didn’t just fall in love with you, Killian. I crawled, on my knees, bleeding for you. So, it was real. Every moment, every smile, every kiss… it was real and it hurt.”

  The pounding ache in the back of my head grew more acute and I blinked several times, trying to clear my blurry vision.

  “I mourned you,” he said, his voice breaking for the first time. “You were right here, in front of me, while I was chasing a ghost. I fucking mourned you for three years, Julianna. How do you think I can… move past this? You turned this marriage into a joke!”

  Killian took a step back. He made it obvious that he couldn’t bear to be close to me, to be in my presence. His hands shook and he brought a fist to his mouth, his expression pinched in agony.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated when my words failed me.

  “I told you… I told what I wanted,” he said darkly. “I whispered things to you that I never spoke with anyone else. My fears, my dreams, my secrets. You knew what my parents’ marriage did to me. And you knew what I wanted for myself. Something real. But you walked into this marriage with lies and secrets…and FUCK!”

  He stabbed a finger into my direction. “You’re a deceitful woman and I can’t even fucking trust you anymore. No, goddamn it. I don’t even know if what I feel for you is love anymore.”

  “No,” I choked. The room swayed and I reached out for him, limping. More tears slid down my cheeks, my throat closing around the large lump.

  “I crashed and burned for you,” Killian hissed. “And you left me there, bleeding. So cruelly. So mercilessly.”

  His lips curled, in an almost threatening manner. “There’s a fine line between love and hate. And I just realized that I love you as much as I fucking hate you, Julianna.”

  I thought giving up on Killian as part of my atonement was difficult. It killed me, to marry him, to watch him hate me while I loved him in silent. To swallow my lies like a bitter pill. To enter this marriage with deceit. My repentance had shattered my heart and turned my love story into something ugly and tragic.

  But I hadn’t been prepared for this moment.

  When my truth came out and I truly lost him.

  I stumbled back into the wall as my body grew cold, numb.

  My brain stuttered.

  My left leg spasmed again and the muscle in my bicep jerked.

  His face hardened, cold and impassive. “I thought you were just a mere storm, but you are the goddamn hurricane – fascinating but deceptive. Tempting but destructive. You’re pure chaos. Once upon a time, I would have gladly let myself be destroyed by you and counted it as a blessing, but now I want absolutely nothing to do with your martyrdom.”

  A sob spilled from my throat and I clutched my chest, feeling as if I had been torn open and ripped apart.

  This was what I wanted, I thought guiltily.

  For him to hate me.

  For him to leave.

  So he could move on. Start over again.

  For the burden of my guilt would not be so heavy anymore.

  And I could finally find peace.

  I had waited for this day – for my atonement to come to an end.

  But God, it hurt.

  The agony was brutal, cutting through me so mercilessly. I reminisced of my love, but it was a seed that never sprouted. That was never meant to be.

  Tragedy ran through our blood and our love story was just a mere wilted rose.

  Our beginning was tai
nted with lies.

  Our ending was stained by my deception.

  But it was the wailing of our broken hearts that tormented me.

  Killian’s gaze roamed my face, lingering over my scars before meeting my eyes.

  One heartbreaking eye-lock.

  Two agonized heartbeats.

  Three shattering seconds.

  “You were the thorn, Julianna. You always were,” Killian said, his voice deceptively soft.

  When he spun around, a devastating sob spilled from my throat.

  I watched him walk away.

  Thud.

  The numbness spread through my body.

  Thud…Thud….

  The room swayed. I gasped.

  My tremors started from my toes, slithering up my legs, digging into my stomach and slicing through my chest. My tongue grew heavy in my mouth and my jaw locked.

  Thud… Thud… Thud…

  The moment my body seized; the world went pitch black.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Killian

  It was Julianna’s pained whisper, my name on her lips, that made me pause at the threshold of her bedroom. And then a crash – something slamming into the floor had me spinning around.

  My stomach dropped when I saw Julianna’s body on the floor, seizing. The rage immediately dissipated, like ice water had been dumped over my head, and I jerked into motion without really thinking. My heart thudded in my chest as I rushed to her side, kneeling by her convulsing body.

  “Grace–”

  My immediate reaction was to gather her in my arms, but her body was almost rigid and her limps jerking rhythmically.

  I didn’t know where to touch her… how to…

  Oh fuck.

  “Help! Shit!” I screamed. Where the fuck was Emily or Stephen? Goddamn it, who would even hear me? We were in the middle of the night and the castle was big enough that no one would hear me screaming from the East wing. Hell, someone could be murdered in here and no one would know until they’d stumble upon the rotting dead body.

  I tried to remember what I read about seizures three years ago, when Gracelynn first told me about her epilepsy. My brain stuttered for a moment before I jumped into action.

  Something soft… I needed something soft to put under her head.

  My eyes darted around the room before I lunged for the blankets, dragging them off the bed and rolling them into a makeshift pillow. I cupped the back of her head, stopping it from slamming into the ground again, and slid the blanket under her head.

  Her jaw was locked tight as spit gathered at the corner of her lips. Her eyes were pinched closed and her face scrunched as her body spasmed, again and with rhythmic motion. Frantically, I took out my phone and started a timer.

  I remembered reading about this. It was important to time her epileptic seizures.

  With my heart practically in my throat, I watched my wife – the woman I loved – go through a seizure. I kept an eye on the timer and the seconds ticked by as I quickly googled how to help a person going through an epileptic seizure.

  At two minutes and fifteen seconds, her body went slack and her head lolled to the side. If I added the time before I started the timer, her seizure lasted less than four minutes.

  Her chest heaved with each ragged breath she took. Her eyes stayed closed, but I saw her fingers moving, twitching slightly.

  “Grace – Julianna?” I whispered hoarsely. “Can you hear me?”

  Her lips parted with a slight moan. There were no words, but it was a response nonetheless. And when she didn’t immediately go into another seizure, I slowly rolled her over to her side, in the recovery position. “You’re safe,” I muttered. “You’re okay. I have you.”

  I gently wiped away the spit that had gathered around the corner of her mouth with the back of my hand. Julianna let out a soft whimper again, but she didn’t open her eyes. I grasped her limp hand in mine and my heart stuttered when I felt a light squeeze from her. It was almost like an involuntary squeeze, weak and drowsy.

  I almost missed it.

  After a few minutes, Julianna remained somewhat unconscious – but thankfully, no more seizures, so I gathered her in my arms and carried her to the bed.

  I pulled the blanket over her body, tucking her in before slumping into the chair next to her bed. There was an awful feeling pricking my chest, a mix of despair and frustration.

  Anguished.

  And rage.

  Goddamn it, I didn’t know how to feel. I was so fucking confused. The fury that I had quickly pushed aside and buried within when Julianna had relapsed into a seizure was now back at full force. Slithering through my veins and burrowing itself into my bones.

  I shook with how furious I was.

  The sick feeling in my gut churned heavily, nausea bubbling in my stomach, and bile rose in my throat. Tasting acrid on my tongue.

  My Gracelynn was Julianna.

  Julianna was Gracelynn.

  The same woman who was scared of horses, who smiled at me so tenderly, who trusted me to guide her through her fears…

  I married the woman I loved through deceit.

  I mourned the woman I loved, when she wasn’t even fucking dead.

  I ran my fingers through her wild, platinum-blonde hair, before wrapping the length around my wrist, once then twice. The kiss deepened, her lips soft and inviting. Her tongue tentatively met mine, shy but curious.

  “I want to wait for our wedding night… for it to be special,” she breathed into the kiss.

  My lips curled into a half-smile. “I burn for you, Princess. But I’ll wait for you if it means finally having you in the way I desperately crave.”

  “You’re a silver-tongued devil, Mr. Spencer.”

  “You’re a devious temptress, Miss Romano.”

  I remembered the first time I saw her, how utterly captivated I had been.

  It was her hair, so unique.

  Her eyes, so alluring.

  Her lips, so sinful.

  Every moment we had together, every kiss, every forbidden touch…

  As much as it was real, it had all been based on a dubious lie. A cruel deception. I always thought Julianna and I were toxic together, but it was now I realized just how poisonous we were. We were fatal together, utterly destructive.

  Our story was everything ugly and cataclysmic.

  Anger was a silent huntress looming in the shadows, poised and ready to strike. It hovered over me like a fog, clouding my judgment. But it wasn’t just rage that held me captive.

  It was the utter despair and agony at Julianna’s deception that made me sick.

  My gaze roved her face, scars and all, before brushing over the unmarred side of her face. My head spun at the familiarity of it – of her delicate jaw, the curve of her full lips, her naturally long lashes and the tiny beauty spot on the bridge of her nose.

  Gracelynn was a ghost, but she was here… in the shape and form of Julianna Spencer.

  My wife.

  A ghost I had loved and mourned for the last three years.

  I rubbed a hand over my face, exhaustion finally hitting me. My head slumped back against the chair and I gazed at the ceiling. I must have dozed off, somehow my brain still active but also drifting into the world of unconsciousness, because I immediately jerked awake when I heard a rustling in bed.

  My eyes met Julianna’s drowsy grey ones. She looked confused, her eyes slowly darting between my face and then around the room, almost sleepily.

  I took a moment to admire her face, the familiarity of it without her black veil. The face that was ever-present in my dreams and the ghost that haunted my nightmares. It was in this moment that I realized her scars did nothing to hinder her beauty.

  No one looked at the moon and thought of how bruised it was for the scarred moon’s beauty was more mesmerizing.

  Her scars told a story, written on her flesh like a tragic tale. She was still the same Gracelynn – goddamn it – Julianna, from three years ago. Scarred, yet beau
tiful like the moon.

  I thought of how easily it’d be to let myself be swept away by her tortured grey eyes and broken soul, but she had already killed my heart once.

  The trust between my wife and I had already been so fragile. Now that it was broken, with some of the shattered pieces missing – there was no love, where there was no trust.

  The unfairness of this situation filled my veins with poison. I should had been happy that she was alive. That I married the woman I loved – yet I felt anything but love for her in this very moment. There was a fine line between love and hate… but the lines had been blurred and the boundaries were no longer intact.

  The walls had crumpled and we stood naked and bare, in the face of a bleeding love. It was tormenting to watch Julianna’s face, to be in her presence now that I had come to know of her lies.

  “Killian,” she whispered my name, her lips barely moving.

  Julianna lifted her arm from under the blankets and reached out for me. “Come closer,” she begged, her voice breaking. “Please.”

  I grasped her hand in mine, our fingers interlacing together. My body shuddered at the touch and I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m here,” I said, reassuring her.

  She gripped my hand weakly, before dozing off again. I watched her sleep, the ache in my chest growing more intense. Unbearable.

  How could we put all of this behind us and move on together?

  My fingers dug into the wet dirt over Gracelynn’s fresh grave – where she had been buried, only an hour ago.

  Thunder bellowed loudly, crashing through before the sky opened up. The storm raged around me, the skies crying agonized tears as I let out a pained roar.

  The rain didn’t stop and it washed away my tears.

  My clothes were soaked through as my body grew numb.

  She… left.

  She… was… gone.

  The pain sliced through me at the memory of me kissing her, just last night. The taste of her lips still lingered on my own. My fingertips still tingled at the memory of how soft her skin was under my touch.

  In a split second, our future had been ripped away from us. How cruel could fate be?