Darkness.
Everyone talked about how powerful, wicked, tempting, deceitful, and cruel a person possessed by it could become. I'd heard countless times that letting yourself sink into the dark meant living by certain rules; that only the tough ones chose that path; that you had to have a rotten soul, because how else could you explain all the terrible things you'd done?
No one seemed to grasp that this black abyss, this snare, could be someone's salvation; that inside it everything grew quiet, and peace emerged. All worries, pain, and sorrow faded into oblivion. The heart slowed its rhythm, the breath steadied. The chest rose and fell evenly, and that familiar knot in the stomach disappeared.
That's exactly how I felt, sitting on the windowsill in the dark bedroom. Bathed in shadows that had become my closest companion. Just me, the darkness, and a trail of cigarette smoke.
My darkness wasn't a cage I locked myself in because of my problems.
My darkness was the key to breathing, a piece of my soul. And it wasn't evil at all. It felt more like letting go. Not only of sins, but of the past itself. Thanks to it, I could shut out everything that had once hurt me. Thanks to it, for a moment, I could take the weight off my shoulders. Thanks to it, I could taste the bitter devotion I used to describe my feelings for Kelsey Jones.
On the day our story came to an end, I understood that life was divided into three stages.
Before her.
With her.
And after her.
YOU ARE READING
BITTER DEVOTION
RomanceKelsey Jones has spent her whole life trying to keep the promise she made to her dying father - to stop her brother from slipping into trouble. But Daniel has been hiding more than she ever imagined, and the abandoned Burlington station turns out to...
