Sinbound ✔️

66

Chapter Sixty-Six:

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"You make me want to make mistakes
You turn temptation into my best friend
You make me just give up and cave
Will I ever fall in love like this again?
I'm in hell, your taste, your smell, I know you far too well
It's a spell
That took me from a dream to this motel
I ring the bell
'Cause honestly I'd rather be with you than by myself
So love me wrong, if you can't love me right
All I want is to be in your vice
You're the one who builds my paradise."

Darius's POV

“It’s called avoidance cluster behaviour.” She whispered.

“What?” I looked up.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, “I made a friend in Moscow. Savannah. She is a doctor. I met her outside a cafe after spraining my ankle. She helped me and soon we became friends. She’s easy to talk to. She’s older but one of the kindest people I’ve come across.” She started to tell me.

My heart started to beat faster in anticipation. She was finally opening up.

“I, uh, initially, I couldn’t talk to her about my personal life. About…you. But, after three months, it became easier to keep the conversation flowing and one sunday afternoon, I ended up telling her about you. About our marriage. I don’t know why I found it so easy to talk to her.”

She gulped and I held her in mine and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“I told her everything. Maybe because she never asked, she never tried to intrude, she accepted what I offered, nothing more and nothing less. She found a therapist for me. I took only two sessions when she diagnosed me with avoidance cluster behaviour. She told me that this is linked to my PTSD. Everything that happened that night triggered that behaviour.”

She paused and wiped her tears, “I was in denial. So, I decided not to see her anymore. I didn’t tell Savannah what she told me but the therapist did after Savannah probed her. I, I didn’t believe her. I mean, this sounds absurd, right? How could I avoid you and all of this? I was just taking my space, I didn’t wanna remember all of that. I-”

She stopped as if she realised something and I sighed aloud. I felt sympathetic for her at that moment.

Her eyes snapped up to mine and her bottom lip wobbled, “I-”

It pained me to see her so helpless, “Eirene, she’s right.”

She shook her head and sobbed, “No.”

She covered her face with her hands and her body shook with loud sobs.

I stood up and picked her up before making my way towards the balcony. She wrapped her legs around me and buried her face in the crook of my neck.

I sat down on one of the chairs and pulled her closer to me before resting my chin on her shoulder and closing my eyes.

At that moment, I realised why partners were called each other's halves. As she was enveloped in my arms, all that hollowness and emptiness inside of me was slowly being replaced by the feeling of wholeness.

She'd stopped crying the moment I picked her up other than the occasional sniffles.

I started to caress her hair and slowly her tense muscles started to relax against my body and eventually, after a few minutes, she let go of all the weight and her heart beat slowed down.