Married For Revenge, Broken By Love

Chapter4

Cecily’s POV

“You only touch me when you’re drunk,” I continued. “You let your mother insult me. You act ashamed of me in daylight and possessive at night.”

“Lower your voice.”

“No.”

“Cecily…”

“I am tired, Keenan.”

The words came out shaking.

“I am so tired.”

For the first time since I had known him, he looked stunned. Like it never occurred to him that I could break too.

“What is it you feel for me Cecily?” he suddenly asked, his question throwing me off balance.

“Love” I simply said.

He gave a cold dry laugh. “Then you must be a fool, Cecily. To love a man who ruins you, a man who has done nothing but hate you. A man who despises your every being. I’ve shown you cruelty. Contempt…Control. And you claim to feel love for me?”

“Maybe it isn’t love,,” I admitted, my shoulders drooping under the weight of honesty. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had the chance to learn what love looks like.”

The words spilled out then, unstoppable.

“You already know this but my life ended before it really began,” I continued. “I dropped out of high school just before I turned fifteen.. right after my mother died. And with her went everything normal. No dances… No crushes… No first kisses or awkward relationships or stupid teenage mistakes.”

I swallowed, my throat tight.

“From then on, it was survival. Scrubbing motel bathrooms until my hands cracked and bled. Washing dishes in diners that smelled like grease and despair. Flipping burgers, sorting trash, doing anything…anything…to keep myself fed. I never had the luxury of romance, Keenan. Or choice.”

I looked up at him again, my eyes burning but dry.

“So if what I feel for you is wrong, or misplaced, or foolish... it’s because I’ve never known anything else. You’re the first man who’s ever made me feel anything at all.”

The room fell silent once more. My voice shook, but I forced myself to keep going.

“There was never a place I could call home in the past ten years, Keenan.”

A hollow laugh escaped me, soft and sharp, I swallowed hard, my throat raw from reliving it. “And the worst part? No one cared..”

The memory burned…I wrapped my arms around myself, as if the room had suddenly grown colder.

I swallowed then I met his gaze again, steady now.

“I’m not telling you this to earn pity,” I said. “I just need you to understand something. Fate never gave me room for romance. Or softness. Or choice.” I exhaled slowly.

“The men who came onto me at work? Supervisors, Coworkers. Customers who thought exhaustion meant desperation. I felt nothing. No spark. No curiosity. Just... numbness. Maybe I’m broken. Maybe I shut that part of myself down too young.”

Then my voice faltered.

“But you,” I said softly. “When you appeared at my small home..so still, so intense…it felt like something inside me woke up. Like a switch I didn’t know existed flipped on.”

I shook my head, embarrassed, angry at myself.

“Maybe it was love at first sight. Maybe it was fear dressed up as attraction. Maybe my mind latched onto you because I needed something.. anything, to survive that moment.” I swallowed hard. “But I feel it. This pull. It won’t leave me alone.”

My hands curled into fists at my sides.

“I want you, Keenan,” I admitted, the words tasting like both truth and shame. “Not as a fantasy. As my husband. As my man. More than I’ve ever wanted anything. Even when you threw my mother's ashes away right in front of me to hurt me. Even when you took the one thing that mattered to me, I still love you Keenan”

I laughed, a short, broken sound that ended in a shiver. “But then I see i…the fire in your eyes. The way you want to punish me, to destroy me for reasons I don't even know... And whatever fragile dream I thought I’d built, it shatters the moment I look at you. Every hope, every moment of trust, crumbles.”

My hands clenched at my sides, nails biting into my palms. “I’m terrified of you. But I can’t stop wanting you. And that terrifies me even more

I’ve been fighting it ever since. Burying myself in tasks, in worry, in fear…anything to drown you out. But you keep slipping back into my thoughts. I hate myself for it. I hate that my heart doesn’t listen to reason.”

I looked back at him, eyes burning.

When he looked down at me, his face was carved from stone…cold, resigned but there was something else there too.

Not compassion.

Something closer to disgust... or pity. “You know what, Cecily?” he said quietly.

His voice was calm. Way too calm. The kind of calm that came before devastation.

“If I had to choose between my late wife and you,” he continued evenly, “I would choose her. Every single time.”

The words slammed into my chest like a physical blow. My lungs seized. My heart burst so violently I thought I heard it crack.

I sucked in a sharp, broken breath, my body folding inward as if trying to protect what little was left of me. Tears came harder now, choking sobs ripping free as I stared up at him, my mouth open, empty of language.

There was nothing left to defend myself with.

He didn’t stop.

“Loving a man who showed you nothing but pain is pathetic,” he said flatly. “Don’t lie to yourself. This isn’t love. It’s desperation. A clawing needed to be seen, to be chosen by someone..anyone…because you’ve never been chosen before.”

Each sentence was a blade, precise and merciless.

“And let me be perfectly clear,” he went on, his eyes locking onto mine with brutal certainty. “In this lifetime or the next, you will never have my love. Not until the day you die.”

My vision swam.

Something inside me collapsed completely.

“Why?” The word slipped out, barely sound. “Why are you like this?”

For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer.

Then he exhaled…long.

His fists clenched at his sides, knuckles whitening, tendons standing out sharply beneath his skin. When he spoke again, his voice was lower and rougher he said slowly, “because I’m incapable of it.”

I watched his jaw tighten, watched his gaze drift somewhere far past me.

“It is too late Cecily”

A knock sounded at the restroom door.

“Madam? Mrs. Dakota?” We both stepped back.

Keenan straightened his suit, giving me one last look. His face became unreadable again.

“Go home,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ll handle my mother.”

Then he walked out…Leaving me there with a loose scarf, a pounding heart and the first tiny spark of anger I had felt in years.