Rot

by Candace Wondrak

What happened when an immovable object met an unstoppable force? Only time would tell. I wasn’t sure which one of us was the object and which one was the force.

“What have you seen, then?” I asked in a whisper. “Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.” I ran my tongue over my bottom lip, suddenly eager. It was a bad idea to get into a pissing match with him, but God, how I wanted to.

He was used to people either letting him be or bowing down to his attitude, but me… well, I wanted to poke the bear and see how vicious he could really be.

Maybe it was stupid, but as I gazed into those black eyes, I swore I saw a reflection of myself. Not just a physical reflection, but a deeper one. Elias, I realized, might just have a soul like mine. He might be a twin flame, as dark as me, as rotten as me.

Without warning, he released my jaw and crawled off me, but within the next moment, he was under the sheets with me, his strong body pinning mine down. I didn’t know what got into him, but this… whatever he had in mind, I was down for.

“You’re going to do whatever the fuck I want you to,” Elias whispered, bringing his head to mine, resting his forehead against me. “You don’t want to pack up and leave? Fine, but when you’re here, you’re mine.”

“You wanted me to go fucking crazy watching you with Jordan Vito? Because I did. I watched. I lost my shit. I listened to you come upstairs and go to bed, like you did nothing wrong. I paced my fucking room while imagining my hands wrapping around Jordan’s neck and squeezing the life out of him,” Elias murmured. “And then I imagined doing the same to you.”

Elias was a certain kind of delicious when he was filled with fury. The look in his black eyes was one of fire, his jaw tense and a vein popping out on his forehead. He definitely looked like he wanted to kill.

“Fuck your mom. Fuck mine. Fuck the world. Let’s be bad together, Elias.”

We were sinners. We were monsters. We were everything normal people never aspired to be, and that’s what made us perfect for each other.

The rot in me had helped guide me to find my happily ever after with someone who was tainted with it, just like me. Our rot would mingle and mix to form something new, something unholy. A sinful devotion, a blasphemous love, two murderous hearts.