Page 56 of Redeem

Part of me also hated him.

A bigger part loved him.

And that left me in a horrible position, one where I was stuck with competing emotions, no outlet for them.

And all because of him.

I stared at him, near sick with the emotions that came over me, dizzy with them. Anxious for this to be over, but not sure what would happen after it was.

“Go. Finish!”

His own expression flashed anger, and for a moment I was excited about the prospect. It would be great if he was mad, would give me some direction, some outlet for the outsize emotions that were flowing through me wildly.

I looked at him, ready to do battle.

Twenty-Two

Ciprian

I was losing control of this conversation. Wasn’t sure that I had ever had it. Still, I couldn’t quite give a name to what I was feeling.

I’d been quite honest when I’d told her that I’d never shared these things with anyone else. Especially the part about my family. I hadn’t allowed myself to think about them for years. Now that I had, the depth and distance between what had happened then, who I’d been, and where I was now stood even starker than it had before.

Dana had seemed to understand when I had told her that I felt like a different person. I sensed that she could connect to what I was saying, that she understood well what I meant, but it hadn’t occurred to me just then how true that was.

The person I had been before my father’s death, the one I became after I killed her husband, the person I was now. All of them were different, distinctly so, and somehow, I needed to reconcile them.

Because as much as I wished it otherwise, as much as I wanted to take away everything I had done, I couldn’t.

Dana thought I was being selfish, that I was telling her all these things in a search for absolution. She was right, at least partially. I wanted her forgiveness. Needed it. But even more, I needed to accept the different parts of myself, who I had been, and what I had done.

It hadn’t been clear to me before, but I now understood why I had sought her out. Dana was the bridge that would carry me from where I’d been to where I wanted to be.

I still didn’t know where that was, had no clue as to what it even might look like, but I knew that I needed to do this in order to find it.

Maybe she was right that I was being selfish.

She shouldn’t have to bear this, but I also thought that maybe, I was doing the right thing.

Because she shouldn’t be stuck either, living in the past, afraid of what might come, and all because of what I had done to her. So yeah, maybe it was selfish, but doing this would help her too, might give her a path out of the lonely world she had constructed for herself.

Might give her a chance to find someone to love her like she deserved to be loved.

That thought, the one where Dana was off with someone else, living a life that she and I could never have was the most awful, the most hopeful.

She couldn’t be mine, but the idea of her being alone, not giving the love she had, not getting the love she deserved was a travesty, one that I would do whatever I could to avoid.

Assuming I could finish this conversation.

Something I wasn’t so sure I could do.

Hearing her tell me in detail what it had been like to find her husband hurt me. It also took me back to that time, one when I knew I would not have hesitated to kill her if it had been necessary or even convenient.

Again made me regret the person I had been, wonder how I had become so soulless.

Maybe this was about that too. Me figuring out what had made me become what I was, helping me figure out a way to make sure I never became it again.

“Ciprian.”