UNTIL LOVE SETS US APART ( JENLISA)

Chapter 10

"What are you talking about?" I demanded, and finally, I found some reserve of strength somewhere inside of me and wrenched myself out of his grasp. His face dropped, but he let me move away from him. I scanned the room once more - no windows and the only door was the one he was standing before. I had no idea where I was in the city or if I was still even in Seoul. If I made a break for it, he would find me again fast enough, and this time, I doubted he would hold back on his anger.He had never been good at that before. How many time had I heard him around that place, screaming, shouting, drunk, high, stuffing money into his pocket befor he came to work out his tensions on one of the girls. He ran that place like a prison, stamping out anything that looked like dissent. I could still remember the first time he'd laid eyes on me, when he'd come to try me for the first time, sliding up in bed beside my curled form and running his hands over my body as though it was fresh meat.

"Jennie," he spoke my name, and I wanted to claw it out of his mouth, scrub it from his memory.

"What?" I spat back. Anger was roiling through my system like a forest fire, and I felt out-of-control.

"I know that I didn't treat you the right way when I first knew you," he looked at me with a soft smile, as though he truly believed that this would be enough to make amends for everything he had put me through.

"And when you left..." He hesitated, shaking his head. "I understood. I understood that I had always had these feelings for you and that I had been just trying to ignore them all thisKeep ignoring them," I muttered, not thinking before the words came out of my mouth. My muscles tensed, ready for pain, a punishment for my harshness. But he continued smiling at me, unwavering, as though he hadn't even heard me speak.

"Sometimes, it takes losing something to realize how much you need it," he replied calmly, and it was as though he'd gone and watched a bunch of romantic movies and was just lifting dialogues straight from there, in the hope that I would go swooning over him by design. But he couldn't just tell me things were different and have me believe it. He had wrecked my trust not just in him, but in everyone. Standing here before him now, I felt such anger that I could feel myself lifting from my own body, no room for my consciousness left in there with all that rage.

"How did you find me?" I demanded, and he shook his head.

"I just knew where you were going to be," he continued. "I let my senses guide me to you, and then, there you were. With a women, but I understand. I had to distract myself with other women, too. "

Lisa... Lisa... She would have realized that I was gone by now, but she must have noticed that I'd packed a bag and gathered some books before I left. She probably would think I had abandoned her. And she wouldn't come looking for me. I closed my eyes and tried to find her mind in mine, find that connection, send a distress signal all the way down and along until I knew it had reached her...

"I started looking for you at the shelter," he began to pace back and forth.

"And I found some of the other girls there," he shook his head. "But I didn't want them back. I'm not sure any of them liked me, any way."

I remembered how I had felt when I had laid eyes on him at the mall, the coursing, screeching panic that had overwhelmed me, and how those girls at the shelter must have felt the same thing seeing him again. Each of them met with the image of their own personal hell in human form. I hated that this man, this half-man, had so much power over all of us.

"After I lost everything," he continued, shaking his head again and smiling, as though he could barely believe he was telling this to me. "I changed, Jennie. I changed. I be came someone else. I realize now... what I was doing; it was all to bring me to you. You've changed me, beyond anything I could ever have imagined..."

He gazed at me, his eyes expectant, and I could tell that he was waiting for me to shower him with praise, to accept this new form of Kai that he was so sure he had become. I wasn't sure how long I just stared at him for, but it felt like a lifetime. And no matter how hard I looked, all I could see in him was this human shell for the creature that had ruined my life, my sense of safety, my ability to give and accept love.

"I don't believe you," I replied bluntly and, to my surprise, the words felt good coming out of my mouth. I kept going.

"I don't believe you've changed at all," I told him, keeping my distance, even though I wanted nothing more than to punch him in the face and watch his certainty wither in front of me.

"Jennie, I don't know what it's going to take for you to understand that things are different," he continued, and I could really see that he believed this somehow, when the brothel had been raided and ruined, he had slipped into some other mindset, one that would protect him from his failure which would have been fine, if I hadn't been the focus of it. He had shifted his obsession with keeping that place profitable on to me.

"There's nothing you could do," I snapped back. I had returned to my body, and I could feel the fury fizzing in my fingertips. I closed my eyes for the briefest moment and remembered how it felt to sleep next to Lisa, how safe it had been for me, how I had chosen it for myself. "The only thing that could make me believe you care for me at all..." I told him, my voice oddly calm, as though this was coming from a place of deep, utter certainty. "Is let me out of here and never come near me again."

I could see the blackness enter him again, like the spirit of something demonic. His shoulders tensed and he backed up, to fill the doorway, blocking my exit from this place. "I'm going to give you some space," he told me, his voice barbed, the words catching on my skin, tearing pieces. "And we can talk again later. You must be tired. Get some sleep."

"Let me out of here," I told him again, bluntly. "I don't want to be with I..." you, Kai.

I wanted to tell him that I hated him, that I would have never hated any being more on earth than him, but the blackness was consuming him, swallowing up anything that might have found mercy for me. He lifted his hand and slammed it down against the door frame, hard enough that the whole thing rattled.

"JENNIE!" he barked, the sound of my name slashing through the air. "I'm trying to make things right here. Why won't you let me?"

He moved towards me again, and this time it was with purpose, with those hands meant to hurt. I backed to the wall behind me, wanting to sink through and fade to nothingness, the only place he couldn't get me.

I didn't say a word to him, as though he was on a hair trigger and the slightest thing would have been enough to set him off. All those memories that had only come to me in my dreams before were flooding my system, my body launched into protective mode, trying to mitigate the damage he could do to me. I had no idea how far he might go. "Sleep," he ordered me, and I knew there was no point arguing with him any further. He glared at me for another moment, and I didn't say a word, lips pressed together, hands flat to the wall behind.

"Sleep," he muttered again, and he turned and made his way out of the room. As soon as the door was shut behind him, I hurried up to flick the lock across and then collapsed back against the wall. I clasped my hand over my mouth and sank to the ground. I was too frightened to cry. I felt as though I was sliding backwards, back to the person I had been before, the victim, the exploited, the used. I closed my eyes as tight as I could and clung to the thought of Lisa and the person I had been when I was with her.

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