Finally had some free time and worked my ass off for you guys because even if you may think otherwise, I do everything I can to update.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy this chapter. I personally beleive this is chapter sets up the pinnacle of the story. One question that's been circling around is if this story will be HEA. Well... what kind of author would I be if I spoiled that? So you're just gonna have to read to find out.

Happy reading! Let me know what you think, my inner muse thrives on your lovely thoughts.

Until next time (which is very very soon ;))

xoxo

Chapter 31 CPOV

My fingers play at the edges of the letter I have just written. I stare down at the cursive writing full of excuses, half-truths, and subterfuge. The three things I only seem to give her.

I've tried to put it down twice on her nightstand. Each time a failure as I know the unbearable agony that will follow once I let it go.

This is completely fucked up.

I am fucked up.

I look to my side, where Ana sleeps peacefully, smears of reddish-grey welts on her ass peek out from the bed's sheets. Thick, striated ligature marks of deep red circle both her wrists. Her biceps blackened and the bend of her neck mottled from my teeth.

Jesus.

No wonder I didn't sleep. I still can't fathom how she is. Despite her warm flesh against mine, I felt every numbing chill that ran over me. All night I stared at the ceiling wondering how things got this far, how much of a trainwreck I've been. I tried to reroute, keep the wheels chugging along, but, all this time… my focus was eviscerated and I failed to realize I was heading the wrong way all this time.

Each moment spent with her, was less time spent on the right track.

I should've noticed I took an unabnegated turn the second I asked her why she was being punished. And while her answers were correct, they weren't all of them. I resented that bastard Kalum and hated that they had a past. A past I wasn't a part of.

I punished her for it.

Seeing his hands on her… I was the angriest I've ever felt in years. It worsened when I saw her shaking like a leaf, her face slick with tears from the torrent of emotions churning inside. She turned transparent and I knew it instantly.

He broke her.

I denied the plausibility of it, but she was breakable. Kalum proved that; and instead of picking up the pieces the right way, I gave her the roughest fuck I had ever given anyone. She took it all. Every lash, bite and thrust; and the sick fuck in me, loved every second. I was so drunk on a sadistic helm that I nearly missed her go into subspace. If I hadn't slowed down… if I hadn't…

Fuck!

Just fuck.

For so long, I thought we were the other's missing piece. I see it now, however, that I may chase her demons away, but she is the light that awakens mine.

I amble back over to her pull the bed comforter across her body. Still, despite being covered, it doesn't erase the abrasions and broken tissue on her skin from my memory.

I stroke a finger from her cheekbone to her lips. There is an undefined beauty that occurs when she sleeps. Like a phenomenon, rare and unknown of its origin, yet undoubtedly a wonder just to get a glimpse of. In this state, she is simply unbroken, unaware of the fiction that is right under her nose.

I could spell it out in every language and the answer would still be the same. Whatever the hell this is turning into has to stop. For her sake and mine.

End things now while she might have a chance to recover.

I'll be damned if the very thought of that didn't rip a goddamned hole in my chest.

She doesn't deserve this. I don't deserve her.

I lean down and press my forehead against hers. Imprinting everything that was her into my synapse. I didn't want to let this go. Yet it stopped being about what I wanted the second Elena got involved.

I place a gentle kiss on her forehead. I can't stand to touch her. My hands had done enough harm.

When my lips leave her skin and I begin my retreat until the color sapphire - sparkling from the peeking sunlight - stops me.

"Christian?"

APOV

I wake up to the warm softness of a kiss on my forehead. When I eyes relax, the reflex of squinting subsiding, a vision of silver eyes come to me. They're breached with emotions that make his whole body recoil like he just fired a gun.

I shift upright, to my elbows and a violent hiss slides out between my teeth.

Christian's eyes fall, distress deepens the worry lines on his face.

"Hi." I, unable to cage the giddiness bubbling inside.

"Hi." His reply sounds lost and anemic but in my ecstatically happy haze, I make nothing of it.

Balling up the sheet to my chest, I lurch forward and deliver an assault of kisses. From his temple to the sharpness of his jaw, I pepper kisses, each one more passionate than the last. It isn't until our flesh touches the other's lips that I realize something was off. His lips feel cold and are unmoving. There is no passion, no heat.

I pull back, expecting his eyes to lock with mine, except they're still preoccupied on my body. Is it really that bad?

Dropping the sheet, my eyes lower. Surely it couldn't…?

Down...

Down...

Down...

I gasp.

I was so so wrong.

Peeking from underneath me, my fair skin is colored purple with fresh bruises and rouge abrasions from the belt. I twist onto my side and catch a glimpse of his work. I hiss as I skim my fingers over one of the welts. Hours later, they're still brilliant with the leather's seductive sting

Grimacing, I yank the comforter to my chest, erasing the marks from visibility.

It didn't matter though. Christian remains cold and pensive. Like he's shutting down.

I watch him intently and try to decipher why. It takes all but seconds for me to see a man with ten tonnes of regret.

I drop my line of sight to his chest.

Why am I just now noticing he's dressed?

What the fuck?
"Christian." Sadness replaces my morning glow. "There's a truth when they say 'It looks worse than it feels,'" I joke, coughing up a fake laugh.

There is a long pause, during which his posture turns stiff, but he doesn't let his shoulders to sag.

He stands at my bedside like he's sinking in quicksand and rather than fighting his way out, he allows it to take him.

"Christian." My voice raises an octave out of fear.

I grab his hand as he takes a step away from me. His eyes cast down to our embrace and linger there. Right then and there, I wanted nothing than for him to look at me. Assure me that nothing has changed. That we were still us. Pulverize this distance that has my heart feeling like there's a fist around it. Things should be perfect. Last night was the first time there were no barriers between us. It was intense, dirty, and venereal and oh so fucking good. Yet, rather than our bond riding closer to unbreakable, I can feel the dents deepening, turning our ironclad armor into brittle nothingness.

I don't understand.

What is happening?

Worry stiffens my spine.

Desperate, I try a different approach.

I shake off the comforter, letting it fall from my body. I have to prove to him I don't regret what he did to me. What we did together. How each mark, is a symbol of his ownership of me, my willingness to submit and welcome the pain he chooses to inflict.

To my despair, it had the opposite effect.
"I have to go."

My eyes whip to him, my center of gravity shifts, reaching toward unstable.

I blink at him.

And wait.

Wait for an explanation.

Instead, he pauses. It's long and drawn out.

Excruciating.
"Stay." The word tumbles out without a semblance of registration from my mind.
"I'll call you later—" he says, cutting himself off, refusing to look at me, withdrawing even further.
"Stay." This time it comes out pleading. I reach for him to pull him back to bed, suck on my bruised skin, make me explode under his dominate touch, do anything but leave. Yet, when my hands bracket his cheeks, his eyes shine a troubled gray.

Whatever he's doing was clearly destroying him.

I pull air into my lungs when his gaze finally seeks mine and traps it. Mouth thinned, he backs way and slips his hand from mine. Before I can ask him what's going on, he slips out the door and vanishes. And I small part of me knew so did the monster.

There was a crush of pain in my heart when I walk into the kitchen. Kate sits crossed-legged with a coffee cup framed by her hands. Her extremely toned midriff lays bared in a triangle shaped sports top with lattice straps for support. I bite down my tongue at unsanitariness of her ass, obviously exposed from the nearly nonexistent shorts, being on the counter. Cringing, though, I couldn't hold back as I take in the sweat lines on fabric near her chest.

A look crosses her flushed face. I shrug it off. I knew what she wanted, I just wasn't in the mood for pleasantries or to deal with the bombardment of questions that await me.

"The kettle is should still be hot. Bought your favorite yesterday while I was out."

I nod as I pass by, walking to the cupboard where I stored my tea, not saying a word.

"I just saw Fifty sneak out. Everything okay?"

"Peachy."

Standing on the tips of my toes, I reach for a packet of my favorite blend and a cup from the shelf below. Once I'm down, I place the tea packet in the cup then turn to the kettle resting on the stove. I grip the handle with a hesitant hand, not sure if the stove's heat transferred to the metal. In the clear, I pour the steaming water into the cup, watching the clear liquid become corrupted in an amber maelstrom.

"Ana?"

Goddammit! Why must she press?!

"Really," I say, huffing out a breath and turning to face her. "Everything's perfect. He just had something he needed his attention at the school." I stop the lie there because there isn't much more left to say. I couldn't give her the answers because I didn't have them. "Don't worry about it. I'm not."

A long pause ghosts, one that could only lead to a conversation I knew I'd dread. So I sip my tea and prayed she wouldn't press. I am hardly holding my shit together as it is. Just as I expected, though, God didn't want to waste his time granting prayers from someone like me.

Kate cleared his throat before saying, "Hey, I know we don't talk about it much it, but you're doing okay, right? I mean, you've stopped - you know…"

"One hundred percent," I intone as my eyes remain on the cup. "Couldn't be better." I can't mask the shaky breaths I draw in as the lies locks around my throat.

"Ana..." Kate hops off the counter with a slight stumble and edges toward me. My hand comes up in a gesture that says, "Don't."

"If something was wrong, you would be the first to know," I vow.. "I've been clean for about two weeks. Haven't touched a blade or knife since. Other than for cooking purposes of course."

She smiles. "So it's over? You're done?"
I choke back a laugh. "It's not a virus that you can get rid of with a shot, Kate. And I don't think I'll ever know if I will be truly over it…" Because I knew I wouldn't. I craved the pain too much. Every day that passes, I become more astounded that I make it through without a blade in my hand. Now, any crisis I may face isn't fixed with a blade to my flesh. It's all still new, but has Christian now become the coolant that submerges my urges and me from reacting instinctively. My emergency brake that keeps me safe and secure. My chest constricts. That, among other reasons is why I am afraid to lose him if I hadn't already. "Good news is, I don't see a breakdown in the eventual future. I'm happy."

"I can see that," she says ecstatically, still I detect a twinge of apprehension. "There have been times when I thought otherwise, but now…" She shakes her head as if shaking off a thought. "You're going to get passed this, you know. All of it."

The tone in which she said 'it' left a bitter taste in my mouth and my skin to dot with goosebumps.

My gut told me I was two seconds away from a bomb being dropped. Turns out it only took one.

"You're father called again." Her whisper is hoarse from reservation. I scrap the bottom of the cup. I had to have misheard that, right? "No. You heard right. It's the fifth one this week."

"Kate, I can't," I whisper back. "I'm not ready. Nor in the right mind."

"He's not going to stop, Ana. He wants one chance. Just hear him out. Then what you decide after that is up to you."

I take out the spoon and set it in the sink. My eyes latch onto the blackness of the drain, wishing I could disappear inside it like Alice did the rabbit hole.

"Call him," she pleads. Both pads of my thumbs run over the cup's rim before taking a sip. "If not for him then do it for you."

My refusal sits on my tongue, ready and waiting, but I swallow it down. There is a reason for everything, and the sudden revival of my father in my life had to mean something. Closure is in my reach. It is all but mine. I just have to want it bad enough. "Fine, I'll do it. But I'm not promising him a damn thing."

"I don't expect you to. Just remember one thing for me before you cut him out of your life completely…" My eyes zero in on hers, "He's your father. That's something that will never change whether he is in your life or not."

Distressed thoughts rake through my head. I can't calm my ragged breathing. My hands shake and turn sweaty. Absentmindedly, I begin to pace around my room. After I feel like I've burned a path into my carpet, I freeze in place and take into account that the more time I waste thinking about doing this rather than doing it, is only going to drive me to the anxietal edge. So, finally, with trembling fingers, I type in ten numbers.

I wait. Each ring lines my stomach with lead. On the fourth, I start to lift the phone off my ear until I hear the line click.

Exhaling deeply, I say, "Hey dad. It's me."