prologue
There's something about being in love with someone you hate.
Something so entirely painful and humiliating, because you know, however much you try, that it'll never work out. But you fight it anyway because when you're together, in those brief moments when you're in bed together and he doesn't leave straight away, instead kissing your throat in a motion that is so gentle you feel like crying. Crying is a release. Because you're so lost underneath all those expectations from everybody, and his bed and his hard, biting embrace is the only place where it all goes away.
You know you're a fool, everyone says so, but oh, the feeling of oblivion - it feels so good. Good enough to give up everything to this strange, strange boy with his possessive, obsessive power over you.
You love him. But you know he'll break you; break you and burn you and that'll be left is a heap of ashes in the shape of a flower on the floor, already lost to the wind. All that is left of your bitter, broken heart. But oh darling, you know how the story ends. So why do you find yourself in the dark of bed, your head so clouded by the dreams only the bottom of a bottle can bring, that you barely even feel the teeth against your shoulder and the burning tongue on your bare skin.
Oh you fool, you beautiful, twisted fool.
You love him.
You hate him.
You hate yourself.