Page 115 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

“Oh, are we doing that? Are we measuring trauma? The reason my trauma seems smaller than yours is because I’ve done something to deal with it rather than sitting in self-pity for the past several years.”

“Self-pity. Is that what you think this is? It is not self-pity that I have remade myself into an instrument of my father’s destruction. It is not self-pity. It is the only way that I can find a shred of sense in the fact that I draw breath still. And now... I know there is no sense to it whatsoever.”

He bent down and picked up something, he didn’t know what, and threw it as hard as he could. He heard the sound of cracking glass, and Auggie gasped.

“You are a child,” she shouted. “Sit in here by yourself then. I’ll come bring you food when I think you’re hungry.”

More of her making decisions for him.

“You cannot leave me,” he raged.

“I can and I will. Because you are a self-pitying fool. I put myself on the line trying to help you. And you might be unfixable, Matias Balcazar. Not because you’re blind, but because you can’t see a life that extends beyond playing this game with your father. This is where it got you. You are here because of you. Not because of fate, not because of God, not even because of your dad. You are here because you couldn’t handle sitting in your own discomfort without doing something. You had to react. And that’s what you’ve been doing all along.”

“You don’t know me. You can’t tell me what I’ve been doing for all these years when you weren’t even around until a couple of months ago.”

“I could leave you up here,” she said. “I could leave you up here to rot. And frankly, at this point, I wouldn’t even be sorry.”

Then he heard something clattered to the ground. Her ring, he realized. It was followed by angry footsteps and a slamming door. She had genuinely left him there.

He growled, to the empty space. And he wished she was there for him to growl at.

The anger came from somewhere deep inside of him, and he had not given voice to such darkness in more years than he could count. But he was the darkness now. Surrounded by it. It was outside of him, and within. It was... It was untenable.

He stood motionless, uncertain of which way to go. And then he began to slowly walk with his hands outstretched, trying to get a gauge for everything in the room. He ran into a side table, and he cursed. He felt for furniture, the smooth surface, down the sides. Then he moved and found the bed, his hands moving over the blankets. He decided that was good enough for now. He sat down on the edge of the mattress. He wanted alcohol, but he would need her to get it for him. He didn’t have his phone, and even if he did, he didn’t know how to use it in his present state.

It really did remind him of the day that Seraphina had died. Because even then he had felt helpless. Useless. Frozen.

And responsible all at the same time.

If he had said something different to her. If he had not said anything to her at all.

He had broken the one person that loved him.

The one person he had loved.

And now there was nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing but this void. But this black hole of need. He had tried to cover it all up. He had managed to find a façade that had... Let him live.

He might not have ever truly taken the joy in life that he pretended to, but it had been better than this.

There had been noise. Distraction. And it might not have ever penetrated down to his soul, but it kept him moving.

The stillness... He despised it.

And right now, he despised Augusta Fremont. A convenient target for his rage. For refusing to do his bidding.

The personification of how the world had turned against him, rather than bending to his will.

He sat there in the darkness, and he understood. Profoundly, the urge to take a substance that might remove you from your reality. Remove you from everything.

If it had been in his hands, he might’ve done so.

It was a rock bottom he had never faced down before. Because he had always had something to do. He’d always had a mission.

And now that mission was gone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SHEWASBEGINNINGto feel guilty. It wasn’t fair to be so mean to him. Maybe. But he was... Maybe she needed to feel sorry for him. Maybe. She had known that the playboy thing was a façade, but it was a horrible thing to lift the lid on and find nothing more than despair underneath it. Darkness. That was what he was. He was a black hole. And she had just left him up there.