Breakable

09 | вσr∂єr

Studying your moves, I wanna play
It's all so easy when you're the one who loves the pain

Chapter 09 ~ Border

        I woke up the next morning feeling like I had slept for an eternity. The pounding headache that I had continued to suffer from had subsided, and my limbs felt more relaxed like I hadn't walked on them in years. My eyes scanned my surroundings, placing myself in my own bedroom beneath the sheets of king-sized bed. I wondered how I got here, so I closed my eyes to trace the events leading to my current predicament.

I remembered having sex with Julian, going back to Harry's place for comfort, and then coming home to a very frightened and concerned Dante. I remembered crying my eyes out and cursing his very existence, all while he held me tightly.

Tearing the sheets off my body with the speed of light, I jumped out of bed, feeling slightly repulsed by having slept in the same bed as that traitor. My mind was a cloud of conflicting thoughts about how I got here, why I was here, and what I was going to do now that I was here. It seemed stupid to stay and act like everything was fine when it wasn't, but at the same time, it felt stupid to leave when this was my life.

Just then, the door swung open with a half-naked Dante behind it. He crept into the room with a tray of food in his hands. Once our eyes locked, he smiled. "Hey, baby."

It hurt to hear him call me that. "What..." I glanced at the food, and then back to him, "...what are you doing?"

"You were out for a while. Figured you'd be hungry when you woke up." He placed the tray at the foot of the bed and stood with his hands at his sides. "So, how are you feeling?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. "How am I feeling?" I repeated the question back to him, slightly appalled that he would ask such an absurd thing like that. How else would I be feeling right after finding out that my husband was cheating and lying to me all this time? "You have damn nerve to think that I—"

"It's early," he stated, completely cutting me off. "I'd rather you not strain your voice so early in the morning. At least eat something and then you can feel free to yell at me all you want."

I pressed my lips together to silence myself. My gaze followed Dante's every move as he walked over to the closet, disappearing within the room's confinements for a few moments, and then reappearing in front of me again. He was fully dressed now in a loose t-shirt and sweatpants, giving me the assumption that he was going to stay home even though I knew he had to work today. "Don't you have work?" I found myself asking, but I regretted it as soon as the words slipped past my lips.

"I had to take off," he said with an odd amount of nonchalance as he crept onto the bed. "Had to be sure you were okay."

"Since when did you care about my well-being," I whispered with the trace of an underlying shout. "You lied to me ... betrayed me ... hurt me ... and now you're saying that you want to be sure that I'm okay. I'm not okay! I was never okay!" With each word, my voice rose to new heights, vibrating strongly in my throat. It must've hurt me more to say these words than it did for Dante to hear them because he continued to stare at me with a calm countenance.

"What would you like me to do, Xavier?" he asked. The question caught me off guard, if I'm honest.

What did I want him to do? I wanted him to stop lying to me. I wanted him to stop cheating on me. I wanted him to stop treating me like I wasn't important to him, but even if he did that, it wouldn't change all the pain he had put me through. I would never be able to look him in the eye without thinking about what he did to me, and there was nothing he could do to fix that.