The Right Kind of Love is Harder than it Looks

By: Karalena Cullen (in collaboration with Harlequin4ever and Selina Knight)

Prologue: Burn

The blonde suddenly appeared from the darkness, dark shadows on her face, under her eyes.. A dream like state entirely. Her clothes were ripped and shredded, dirty and bloodied, but the fire in her eyes we almost too real. One minute he was fitfully sleeping, empty liquor bottles littered the floor, just like the cigarettes did-and the next, his weary eyes opened to fall on her. She cut him off before he could even blink. "You know I blame you. I blame you for our children taking off. I blame you for how they came out after I died. It was all up to you, and you failed them. You failed me." She took a step closer, dark eyes seething. "You can't even keep your dick in your pants long enough to see what's right in front of you..!"

Suddenly she was lit up with bright blue flames, her face changing-morphing into a horribly disfigured, twisted, alter version of herself. "YOU WERE THE ONE WHO CHEATED ON ME TIME AND TIME AGAIN. THE ONE WHO I HAD TO PUT UP WITH, AND NOW I'M REALLY STUCK WITH YOU BECAUSE OF THIS HUMAN GROWING INSIDE OF ME! YOU TURNED ME HUMAN! AND THEN YOU GET ALL JEALOUS BECAUSE I'M FRIENDS WITH ANOTHER MAN. CAN'T HANDLE THE HEAT BABY?!" She shrieked so loud the windows shattered. Glass flew in every which direction, scattered all over the place. The wind picked up, blew the curtains and left the place cold. She laughed a loud booming laugh that rattled the door frame. "Maybe I should just kill you and be done with it."

Wary, bloodshot eyes regarded her blankly. "Blame me all you like. Do you think I give a shit anymore what you think of me? You could have saved everybody the trouble if you'd only let me go to begin with. All those years ago..." His eyes seemed to roll slightly back to gaze up at the ceiling. He rocked slightly. Then, leveling his eyes back on hers, he lifted his fingers to his mouth, slid them between his lips and cocked his thumb back. Mimicking pulling a trigger, his cheeks flared and he dropped his hand back into his lap before letting out a hysterical little chuckle.

"You stupid sorry son of a bitch." A look so undignified marred her face as she looked at him. "So pathetic. So weak. You screw everything up. Everything you touch just falls apart."

The part where he mimicked the gun. She laughed bitterly. "As I recall...you arrogant asshole, I was pregnant with your spawns." Black eyes pierced his.

"A fact you did everything in your power to hide from the world. I had a family already. A marriage… a son. But you couldn't let me go. That's how it's always been, time and time again. You couldn't stand to lose out to anyone else." He was completely unfazed by her piercing gaze, his own eyes held hers with an almost bored expression.

"You seem to conveniently forget… I'm not the only one who fucked around." Here a dark shadow crept into his baby blues and coiled dangerously. "In the end… you were the one who had no shame."

She said nothing to this. She knew damned well what he was referring to, but he knew she would forever live in denial of the cold, hard facts of what had truly meant the end of their marriage… of their love that had once burned brighter than all the stars in the Heavens.

He gave her a strange, oddly sober look. Despite the pain, the shame, in his eyes, his voice sounded completely flat. Hollow even. "You weren't the only one who couldn't let go. I'm just as guilty. But this time it's different. This time… I can let you go. I can...and I have." He shook his dark head. "You were the one who couldn't let me go baby."

She recoiled at that, venom in her words."Because you're piss weak. Can't handle the fire."

There was a slight pause. "I never could understand you. I guess I could never be 'the one' that tamed you. Or can you even be tamed?"

And then she was gloating. "You think you're god's gift to women, and the truth is big boy, you've got nothin' worth bragging about. I may have ended up in the wrong arms, but you're the one who pushed me there. You're the one who pushed us both there!" She bent down close to him, a shameless, wicked smirk on her lips as she said softly, almost sweetly, "The moment he touched me for the first time like that… oh so sweet and yes… yes so wrong… but baby, he loved me in ways you never could. Ways you never dared!" There was a low dark chuckle from her blood red lips, before she slapped him all too suddenly. "I'm not yours anymore. I never will be again."

The sting of her palm was no surprise, and nothing compared to the sting of her words. They resonated through him, up from the darkest, coldest depths of his very soul. Echo's, mirroring all and every aspect of the most desolate and destructive emotions of all he was.

She was right. She wasn't his. This wasn't his wife. The woman he spent more than one lifetime loving. He was sure this was nothing more than A vile, goading replica of the woman he'd spent more than a lifetime in agony over. Sent here meaning to demoralize him... to break him.

This is what they did. This was their sole purpose of existence. Break you down, exploit any and all of your vulnerabilities, leaving you exposed... open. He forced himself to believe this because the alternative … would surely break him utterly.

"It doesn't make any difference." He grit out, a maniacal grin forming on his cracked lips. "Do you think any man would put up with you for even half as long as I did?!" He shook his head as he spit his own venom right back at her. "Take the pathetic meat bag if you want him, it's only a matter of time before he sees you for what you really are! Only a matter of time before you fall off that golden pedestal he's spent an entire childhood envisioning you on. You're going to fall in his eyes soon baby. So soon. And when you do, he's not just going to leave you... he's going to send you down to where you've belonged all along. To burn!"

The smirk on her lips was bitterly vicious. "It would have made all the difference in the world, Batty Boy." She laughed, hard, and then she was suddenly serious. Her features twisting into something even uglier than before.

"And was that a derogatory reference at being a wife...to you?" She snickered. "Do you know how hard it is to be your wife? It's not something easy. I doubt anyone else could fucking put up with all the bullshit you shove onto them. They'd crack, dump your sorry ass long before I did. You. Are. Worthless."

Then she was in his face once more, eyes incinerating deep within her. "Burn?" She backhanded him brutally across the face once more. "Burn?!" Her fingernails left a livid streak of his own bright crimson behind on his pale, scruffy cheek in their wake. "IF I HAVE TO BURN, BABY, YOU'RE GONNA BURN WITH ME!"