My Perfect Marriage

Chapter25

Sophia gets up on shaking legs and pulls herself together, grabbing onto the wall and rails to give herself purchase. The shock of it numbing her out and the pain in her body pulling her attention away from how unbearable this is. She stares at him while the tears stream down her face, dripping onto her now sodden t-shirt, and then at Celine. With a sarcastic smile, she shakes her head.

"You finally found a way, huh. To punish me for Tia." It falls out of her mouth thoughtlessly, her inner voice speaking out, and his head shoots up to look at her with a frown.

"Who's Tia?" He asks impulsively, and Sophia closes her eyes at him, saying her name, hating how it sounds on his lips. A name she never told him, never uttered to a single soul. He never knew about it because she's never dared to say it out loud since the moment she let her leave her body. He said they didn't name her, but he didn't know.

"No one. Nothing. Forget it. I'm leaving." It's a garbled jumble of words, and she turns and starts walking away on Bambi legs. Slow and unstable. Trying to reel herself back in and pull her head together, but his warm hand on her wrist stops her in her tracks as he catches her and hauls her back.

"Don't go. Let me take you. I'll drive us somewhere. We need to talk. I can't let you go alone like this." He reaches out with his other hand and tries to wipe the tears from her cheek that are probably half the reason he's in shock because she doesn't cry, ever.

Sophia reacts violently. Slapping his hand away, tugging herself free, and shoves him hard in the abdomen, so he stumbles backward and has to grab the railing to save himself. She doesn't wait for another invasive touch and just runs. Heading in the direction she came from, she puts her head down to put her all into it, needing to be away from him and Celine. Needing to be alone to process this and stop the mental breakdown she seems to be in the process of having. It's so big she feels like she might die.

"Sophia, wait."

His anxious voice follows her, and yet she doesn't stop. She runs harder and faster until she feels like her limbs might snap and her lungs are fit to bursting. She doesn't know where she finds the strength or energy when every part of her is aching like a toothache and she's sapped of life.

"Sophia!!!" he sounds desperate, but it's too late. She doesn't want to see him anymore. She doesn't want to feel this way anymore. She curses the day she was born into this family and the day her mother told her he would be her future.

"Leon... Leon, come back. Leon!!" Celine's voice follows from further back, and Sophia blots it out. Blots them both out and runs like her life depends on it.

.........

Meanwhile, Sophia bursts into their bedroom, still in the same emotional mess she was running all the way here, and somehow managed to get in and up here without alerting anyone to her presence. A fire is coursing through her veins, yet her mind's a blistering mess of utter chaos, and she can't think or see straight. The pain is unbearable, and years' worth of bottled-up feelings are spewing out of her like someone turned on a tap. She's a volcano that finally erupted.

She's breathing in short raspy gulps, wiping her snot and tear-drenched face with the back of her hand, yet more keeps coming, and she hiccups up with every few gasps. She rakes her fingers through her hair, which is tied up in a messy bun, yanking it down with her erratic movements and adding to the despairing image of herself-caked in dried blood and grime and emotional ruin. Rubbing her fingers over her face and down her throat, she tries to reel her mind back from its shattered pieces. Her entire world has come tumbling down. What she always thought was a solid fortress made of brick and mortar was just a pack of precariously balanced cards that only held up until Leon blew on them.

"I HATE YOU!!!" Sophia screams into the stark emptiness of their room, despising everything she sees about her. The lonely, bland, marital bedroom that's so devoid of life and looks more like a show home pictorial for the rich and famous. A symbol of their fake life and their fake love. A demon inside her rips loose, and she runs for their shared wardrobe, yanking open the doors and heading right for his side. She is possessed with a need to vent and take it out on his possessions in place of him.

In a frenzy of insanity, she starts yanking out all the clothes she ever bought him, despising, loathing every single memory and feeling as they spew out with the array of colored fabric.

"I did everything for you. I lost myself for you. I buried my pain for you. I made you who you are, and this is what I get as a thank you."

Tearing shirts, ripping off buttons, and throwing them out of the door and into their bedroom with all her might. Her hands burn and ache as material cuts into her, yet she can't stop the sequence of mass destruction. She is forcing open drawers and emptying the contents across the marble floor so she can kick them around and stamp them to death. Spreading his belongings around her and picking out every single thing that his hands have ever touched so she can launch them at the walls or into the bedroom.

"She could never have done those things. Never have held up your family or made POLO what it is now. She could never have taken the pressure or the pain and been your silent rock all these years."

Sophia opens his watch case and throws them down, jumping all over them and kicking them aside, her ankles slicing with fragments of glass and broken metal she sends into the air, but she feels nothing. His ties, his shoes, his jackets, his aftershave. All are pulled out, rumpled, broken, or torn and thrown out into the heap of amassing things that resemble a small mountain, yet she can't stop.

She can't release this building-up pressure inside her as it all tumbles out of everything held down for so long. The wall broke, the dam erupted, and now she can't put anything back inside her perfectly maintained box.

"I stayed quiet. I never cried. I never refused to do anything for you. I submitted, obeyed, and did things to ensure you were happy. They made my entire life's purpose about you."