The Fate Of Broken Hearts

Chapter 61

(Trigger warning: contains suicide, abuse, and self harm. Reader discretion is advised.)

Aiden's POV.

There was a time in my life where there was nothing but pain and darkness. My world was constantly falling apart, but I never noticed until I was crushed by it. Maybe it started with my father. Maybe his cruelty turned me into what I am. Or maybe it was my mother. Maybe it was her death that truly broke me.

Everything passed by out of focus. All that remained were the muddled fragments stringing along inside a concoction of memories. They floated there as if they once belonged to someone else, a different life. But pain was not just a memory for me. I was filled with it. It lived on my skin as torn pieces of paper. It hid in my thoughts as a reminder of who I truly was.

Wounds turned to scars and the pain faded away behind them. It was proof that I survived. But I survived for so long that I forgot what it was like to really live.

There isn't a day I'm not disgusted by the sight of my past without feeling every limb burn or my lungs slowly shut down until I suffocate.

However, as I looked at Emma, tears flowing down her pink cheeks in small rivers, I knew I would give her every breath if it took away the hurt. I would show her all of my damned scars if it meant she could take back her words.
Despite everything, she taught me a different version of my darkness. A version that was not something evil or tormenting, but something that absorbed all colours of light. She showed me how naive I was to imagine that I could exist without relying on anyone. She proved to me that I didn't have to bear the weight of my pain alone. She weaved herself into my life, my heart, and refused to leave. She intruded on every thought, every moment of happiness until I couldn't imagine a life without her.

She willingly took my soul and wiped it clean with her gentle hands.

And it dawned on me every time I looked into those sinking blue eyes that Emma was the true reason I was still holding on.
But even though I believed in love, I never thought it was meant for me. I was rotten; a poison to every person who entered my life. I'd been told as much, time and time again, that even the thought of getting close to anyone never crossed my mind.

Then, there was Emma. She was the kindness in the world, always taking care of others before herself even though they didn't deserve it. She chose love. She always chose love. And then, she chose me.

She always found a way to redeem me. To see me. To understand me. There was so much of me she did not know, and yet, she trusted me anyway.

But she deserved someone who could hold her. Someone who could touch her without being so afraid of himself that he didn't even think about pulling away.

On more than one occasion I wondered how I could possibly love her when I was so filled with self-hatred. How could she love me when I was proof that our monsters reside inside us?

If my touch had caused this reaction from her, I couldn't even begin to imagine what she'd do if I told her the things she wished to hear. I wanted to keep those things far away from her – from us. I did not want to show her what I had become. But I didn't have a choice anymore. I was on the verge of losing the only person I had learned to love.

"Emma," I tried to reach her once more, to feel her warmth, but she was cold.

Having her pull away with so much repulsion twisted on her features felt worse than any scar marked on my skin, visible or not. The emptiness in her eyes filled the cavities in my chest and weighed me down with metal chains. That dark tunnel I had lived in my whole life was beginning to surround me again, trapping me in a box with no windows of worth.