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My story was tainted from the beginning, tainted by her blood. And her death was a sin for me to bear for the rest of my breathing days. I wasn’t evil, but I was the villain anyway.
The ugliness of life is that sometimes we can’t undo what has been done. It doesn’t matter how devastating the outcome is; we can’t turn back time – can’t change the past – can’t fix the future.
Guilt was what killed me everyday. Pain became my companion; grief was my nightmare and guilt turned out to be my soulmate.
“Listen to me very carefully. You will marry me; you will pay for your sins and you will die at my hands.”
He didn’t see that I was already paying for my mistakes. Just like everyone else, Killian didn’t see me. They saw my veil. They saw my sin. No one saw Julianna Romano anymore. They didn’t see my remorse– or that my sister’s ghost haunted me.
It would have been easy to say that Killian was the villain. But it was far from the truth. He was just another casualty of my mistakes and the end result of my sins.
I was the villain in this messy fairy tale.
“I will break you, Julianna Romano.” You can’t break what’s already broken.
This marriage was his vengeance – the vows would not be of love, but of hatred. His retaliation. My atonement. One imperfect marriage.
Even while I was still alive, my existence had been rendered to the life of a ghost.
I just wanted someone to look at me as Julianna Romano. Not to judge, pity or hate. Not as the scarred girl, hiding behind her veil. Not as Gracelynn’s killer. And definitely not as the woman who had ruined Killian’s life. I wanted to be Julianna again.
The girl with a broken heart; the girl who was atoning for her sins; the girl who survived. Not the accident. But the girl who survived the gossips, the cruel words, the sneers, the cold eyes, the heartless resentment and her own self-loathing.
“To hurt you, to break you… and to hate you for the rest of our days. I will never be your protector, never your defender; I vow to be the villain in your story.” “… And to keep her in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, for as long as you both shall live?” “In health and in sickness, through sorrow and pain, for all the days in my life, I will be your worst nightmare.”
Pain buried its fangs into my flesh, tearing into me, sinking its poison into my veins and I craved it more than I wanted solace or needed salvation. Pain was a dwelling of madness, but it was exactly what kept me sane.
Pity was ugly to people like us, a poison without its remedy. We only wanted people to understand us.
My body had long grown accustomed to pain. I had lived with it long enough that it was now familiar; we were best friends, after all. Pain and me – we came together, bonded by my tormenting past and the sins I bore on my flesh.
And so, I got lost in a love story that wasn’t my own, yet it called me. Lured me with the promise of tragedy. Dragged me into the depths of despair. And tempted me with its beautiful sorrow.
We are lost, in the madness of love. Like the morrow frost, during the winter days. Thy love is cold, if only, Our story could hast been foretold. The pain would not hast been threefold. - A
“Three lives. I ruined myself that night,” I said, my voice breaking. “You seem to forget that every time. You. Are. Not. The. Only. One. Who. Is. Suffering. I miss her too. I loved her too. And yes, I hate myself too. More than you can ever hate me. So no, your anger and your hatred does nothing to me.”
Falling in love is like the sunshine, But our moments are lost in time. Like a drowning lover, Yet again, I fall for thou, But thy heart yearns another. - A
“Some people are roses, Beasty. Some people are thorns. Here’s the thing, you can’t turn a thorn into a rose petal. A thorn is a thorn, beautiful but unpleasant and painful at the same time. They mingle with the roses, but never let the thorns get to you. For once you’re pricked, you bleed.”
“What’s a rose without thorns? A wilted rose.”
“I came into your life, bringing tragedy with me,” I whispered. “Love can kill while still keeping you alive to feel it. How deadly it is, how painful, how cruel.”
“If I could go back to change the past… I would have never willing inserted myself into your life, if I knew our story would be filled with such venom. Our beginning was stained and our future is broken.”
Because my truth was that… I fell in love with Killian Spencer when I was seventeen years old. But I only ended up killing his heart.
“You think it doesn’t hurt me? You think it doesn’t pain me? Gracelynn was my sister before she was your lover. I knew her far longer than she was in your life. I loved her far longer than you have and I was there. I. Was. There. In that fucking car.”
Our story was made out of broken bones, built on a splintered spine; the pages stained with blood and words cursed with devastation. We were battle worn. And perhaps… if we had met in another lifetime, our story would have been different. Less grief and more tenderness.
Perhaps in another lifetime… We would have been just Killian and Julianna – without a past to hold us back. Without tragedy in our veins.
I carried Gracelynn’s ghost on my shoulders and Killian’s lover in my eyes. I was Julianna, but I was also the ghost that haunted his dreams. How unfair it was. That our story had come to this. Nothing more but wrath and sorrow. Nothing less than a tainted past that wrote our future.
It distracted me. I opened my hand, utterly mesmerized by the sight of blood staining my palm. It hurt. But I liked the pain. I needed it. It called to me. Pain soothed me and I submerged myself in it.
scars. I never thought this day would come, where I would stand in front of Killian without my veil. Where my lies had come undone and I was bare in front of him – my scars on display and my secrets no longer hidden.
He saw me. Like he did three years ago. Killian saw the real Julianna. The one who was tormented by the ghost of her sister. The one who succumbed to the disease that was guilt. Cursed with memories that were moored inside of me – my sister’s bloodied and mangled face. A soul that howled in despair, a resentment that had burrowed itself inside my bones and sorrow that was too heavy to carry.
Atonement was only an illusion that I was desperate to believe in.
“I plummeted into chaos because your love was everything beautiful and pure, but my love was everything deceitful and destructive. So, I didn’t just fall in love with you, Killian. I crawled, on my knees, bleeding for you. So, it was real. Every moment, every smile, every kiss… it was real and it hurt.”
“I mourned you,” he said, his voice breaking for the first time. “You were right here, in front of me, while I was chasing a ghost. I fucking mourned you for three years, Julianna. How do you think I can… move past this? You turned this marriage into a joke!”
“I crashed and burned for you,” Killian hissed. “And you left me there, bleeding. So cruelly. So mercilessly.”
“There’s a fine line between love and hate. And I just realized that I love you as much as I fucking hate you, Julianna.”
Tragedy ran through our blood and our love story was just a mere wilted rose. Our beginning was tainted with lies. Our ending was stained by my deception. But it was the wailing of our broken hearts that tormented me.
One heartbreaking eye-lock. Two agonized heartbeats. Three shattering seconds. “You were the thorn, Julianna. You always were,” Killian said, his voice deceptively soft.
I married the woman I loved through deceit. I mourned the woman I loved, when she wasn’t even fucking dead.
“I burn for you, Princess. But I’ll wait for you if it means finally having you in the way I desperately crave.” “You’re a silver-tongued devil, Mr. Spencer.” “You’re a devious temptress, Miss Romano.”
We were fatal together, utterly destructive. Our story was everything ugly and cataclysmic.
No one looked at the moon and thought of how bruised it was for the scarred moon’s beauty was more mesmerizing.
Because where there was no trust… there was no love. And I didn’t know if I would ever love her again, without loathing her to the same degree.
Our love was cursed, to be told like a tragic tale of two lovers never coming together as one. Our story was one of melancholy and self-destruction. Sweet poison, with no real antidote.
Feeling numb and empty wasn’t really being empty on the inside. Humans are so used to chasing happiness and we like it, the pleasing and soft weight of it that envelops us. Happiness cocoons us within its warmth. Because it’s so familiar, we never notice the weight of it until it’s gone. When happiness is replaced with something else, it gives us the illusion that the comforting weight is gone. So now… we’re weightless. Empty.
“Don’t make me fall in love with you again.” “I can’t promise that,” I whispered. “Because it doesn’t matter how hard I try, I can’t take you out of my heart. You’re so deep under my skin that you’ve burrowed yourself into a corner of my soul, Killian.”
“I hate you but I crave you. I hate you but I need you.” As if to prove his words, he bucked his hips up, his hardness digging into the curve of my ass. “Hate is too simple a word to describe what we have, what I feel for you. It’s not hatred, Princess. It’s so much more. It’s chaos,” he rasped in my ear.
My love story might not have been a perfect fairy tale. It was messy and ugly, stained by guilt and tarnished with grief. Killian and I were a tale of flawed love.
face. “You’ve dug yourself under my skin, into my bones. You fucking stabbed me in the chest, I’m bleeding for you, Princess. You kill me and I still fucking need you like I need my next breath. I need you as much as I want to destroy you. How is that possible?” “My love is toxic,” I said, my voice groggy and thick with emotion. “It’s fucking poison,” he agreed.
