The Hunter's Angel

So This Is Goodbye

I had always wondered what heartbreak would feel like. 

I'd seen it in movies, read it in books. How the characters would fall apart, lose themselves in pain and grief as they wept and mourned for days on end. 

Hell, I'd seen it before my very eyes too, when my mom realized that the love of her life had committed the cruelest act of betrayal. I'd watched her suffer for endless months, as she tried to understand how someone she had loved so dearly was capable of hurting her so deeply. 

How a man could shatter everything inside of you in one single night. 

And yet, despite it all, none of it had prepared me for this. 

Nothing could have prepared me for the sharp ache in my chest, for the crushing heaviness of my breath, for the void inside of me that felt far too cold. For the way that my head pounded and my throat burned from the tears I had cried, so much so that I wasn't sure I had any left. 

For what it felt like to have my heart split open.

It was a kind of hurt I had never known before. The kind that made me wish I could just turn everything off—that I could just stop feeling.  

Because it felt like the ache in my heart was here to stay.

I had fallen asleep for several hours, spending the entire rest of the day holed up inside the guest room. I hadn't even come out to eat, the cold discomfort inside of me making it hard to stomach the idea of food. 

Sometime after waking up, I had realized that the necklace Hunter had salvaged for me was back on my neck. He must have come into the room after I had fallen asleep and put it back on for me. 

I didn't know what to think about that. I couldn't make sense of it at all. 

My first thought had been to take it off. I was no longer his, after all. Why would I wear his nickname for me around my neck? 

But I hadn't been able to do it. Maybe because it was the last thing he had given me—maybe because it was the only piece of him I still had. I didn't think there was a sensible explanation. 

I only knew that I didn't have it in me yet. And I wasn't sure what that said about me. 

Every so often throughout the day, I could hear Hunter's footsteps tread outside of the door, pacing back and forth. As if he was coming to check up on me, building the courage to say something. 

Yet, he never opened the door.

And even though I told myself that I didn't want to see him, the fact that he never came hurt so much worse.

A part of me clung to the belief that maybe it was because if he did, he would realize what a mistake he had made. That if he looked into my eyes, he would take everything back. He would stay.

But as the hours passed, and the silence grew, that idea slowly dissipated. 

This time, there was no going back. 

God. I had never known that my entire world could come crashing down so swiftly. 

How ten stupid words could hurt so fucking bad. 

Despite the hurt coursing through me, though, I wasn't sure that I had fully come to terms with everything. I mean, how could I? 

I had just gone from being kidnapped by a cartel, to being rescued by the man I love, only to have him break up with me—all in the span of one night. 

It was a level of fucked-up I couldn't even comprehend. 

As the hours inside the room passed, I fell beneath waves of sorrow and anger. But as the day progressed, and I had more time to think, the anger seemed to be winning.