Sometimes he loves me

Chapter 37

EMMA

"Why aren't you eating?" Vincent asks, taking another bite of the steak I prepared for him.
I rip my gaze from the heavy raindrops that smash against the window next to the dinner table and look up at him. He unbuttoned his white shirt, showing his inkless skin. I don't know why that suddenly bothers me.

"I'm not hungry." I tell him and straighten my back, moving my gaze back to the raindrops on the window.

"Maybe that's for the better." He says emotionless.
I look at him confused and he gestures to my body. "Look at your stomach. You've already eaten enough for both of us for the whole winter."

I slowly let my gaze move to my stomach. I quickly cover myself to hide it. I felt really beautiful today... Especially underneath Finn's gaze and— Suddenly I get overwhelmed by guilt that I let him come stand so close to me and that I challenged him with the things I said.

I'm not like that at all. I used to be so painfully faithful that I didn't even make eye contact with other men. Maybe the lack of affection has finally driven me to insanity. Or Vincent's harsh words and the bruises on my skin have finally destroyed who I am. But if it destroyed me, can I still call it love?
Of course not. It hasn't been love for a while now. It has been constant fighting, tears, feeling lonely and hurt, constant rejection no matter how hard I tried to be appreciated. There's a reason I fell for Finn three years ago. I always feel seen by him. He made me feel alive, just like today. He's the complete opposite of Vincent.

I ignore him and sigh "Can you do the dishes? I'm going to bed, I'm tired."

My body feels exhausted from cleaning the whole house, doing laundry and cooking dinner after I came back from MMR.

I never imagined living together would be like this. I imagined it being more of a 50/50 kind of thing. You know, cooking or doing the dishes together. One puts the dirty laundry in the washing machine, the other hangs it up to dry and then fold it together and put it back in the closet...

"Of what? Sitting on the couch and smoking weed all day?" He asks and sticks his fork into a piece of vegetable on my plate and puts it into his mouth.

I look at him and feel my walls crawl higher, but he doesn't look back at me and keeps his blue eyes on the steak he is now cutting.

He rarely looks at me anyway, sometimes it's as if I don't exist to him. And when he does look at me, his expression is angry. Always agitated, like I'm some kind of unwanted pet in his house that's always in the way.

It's weird how my life slowly turned back to how everything was before Finn came along three years ago. How did I let myself forget that Vincent blackmailed me to come back to him? I forgot about it until I saw Finn yesterday. I fucking made myself forget. I made myself believe that things got better. And they did... for a little while at least. We did more stuff together like going for a picnic or the movies, but that all made me realise how out of love I was with him. It was never from love. We mostly went out because I asked him time and time again if we could do more together, mainly because I felt we were supposed to as a couple. So after a couple of fights, he eventually agreed.

Maybe that's my downfall? That I forget our fights so easily, making it hard for me to stay mad. I never was that type of woman anyway. I mean, just look at how easily I forgave Finn when I found out who he was. So I guess that's it.

Vincent always tells me I'm too much or not enough, that I'm whining and crying over nothing, making me doubt myself even more. But I forget, I always forget the things he says and does to me. They all fall into nothing when he shows me the tiniest bit of affection or things go well.