Memories are burdens that weigh down your mind; they won't allow you to move forward unless you leave someone behind. 

Verklempt 
(adj.) completely overcome with emotion 

June 16, 2020 

"I don't want you to go." 

If getting down on my knees and begging like a slave is what it'll take for her to miraculously stay, I would do it. No questions asked. 

Callista has been a constant in my life all these years and now that I'm presented with the reality of her leaving right before my face, denial is a luxury I don't have anymore. 

"I don't want me to leave either." she whispers back, looking back at me with the saddest of smiles. 

Then don't, I wish I could say. But I know it's out of the question. 

Smiles are supposed to express happiness. I never thought a smile could ever look this sorrowful, this heartbreaking. My heart is slowly but surely cracking. 

I can't imagine walking back from school and not being welcomed by those toothy smiles. By those vibrant eyes that made me believe in magic — because that's what they personified, — magic in its purest form. Emerald, crystalline magic that captivated me. 

Her gaze is spellbinding. 

So are her smiles. 

And her lips. 

I feel my heart lurch in my chest. 

I can't be having these thoughts about her. Callista Azalea Willow is my best friend, period. I'm not going to ruin what we have over some stupid, hormonal thoughts. 

"I'll always remember you, Chance, no matter which part of the world I'm in," she says when I stay quiet for too long. Then a wry lilt enters her tone, "Don't go all emo on me now. I know you hate the sappy shit as much as me so we can skip that part." 

I glance nervously behind, paranoid of someone deciding to take a detour and wander here — specifically my parents or hers. 

I love my parents to death, but they're overbearing to the point of exhaustion sometimes. Last month, they finally sat me down and told me not to socialize with the family next door.

That's, like, eight years too late.

Callista already told me about her father's dislike for mine all those years ago, and since my father hadn't mentioned anything about it until last month, I didn't pluck up the balls to ask him myself either.

Seeing him openly acknowledge it now was strange, but meh. 

Dad was holding some business event at home today and how Marcel Huxley of all people managed to get his family on the invitation list, I don't know; but judging by the harsh look on my father's face and a subtle smugness on the latter's, I gathered that it wasn't anything good. 

I might have given more than half a shit if Callista wasn't at the forefront of my mind. 

At least his actions mean I have her for the evening before she leaves. 

Despite myself, I smirk a little. "I don't know, I think you'd enjoy the sight of my bawling my eyes out." 

"Don't." She knocks her shoulder against mine, and I tighten my hold around the railing to not go splat on the ground. "I don't like seeing you sad." 

I stare down at the rosebushes at the back of my house, my legs dangling in the air as I readjust myself on the ledge. 

"Tough luck, princess. I'm swallowing the sands of misery right now." 

Someone needs to snatch Ashley Willow's heart out of Carlos Landon's hands and give it back to Marcel Huxley. Did she seriously have to go and fall for a guy who couldn't even bother moving to Blackwood Creek for her? No, he had to make her move to Canada for him. 

Fucking asshole. 

Can't even sacrifice a little for love. He could learn a thing or two from me. 

"The hell are the sands of misery?" 

I shrug. "Ask your stepfather when you meet him again." 

She groans and drops her forehead on my shoulder. "I already acted out like a mentally disabled crackhead the last time. He'll think I've got a screw loose and convince my mom to throw me in the loony bin." 

"You mean this screw?" I dig through my pockets and hold up a screw I stole from one of the classroom's benches. I've been carrying it around for these exact moments. 

She looks up and her mouth falls open. "That's definitely yours because what the fuck." 

I grin and she hits my ankle with her shoe. My grin widens. 

"I'll push you off this balcony if you don't stop looking so smug." 

"Yeah, and then you'll come running downstairs to catch me in your arms because you love me too much to let me die." 

I say it jokingly, but inside, my heart is hammering. Will she ever love me the way I want her to? Not platonically, but beyond lines I've never dared to cross. 

I'm treading one of those very lines right now. 

"Mhm," she hums. "It would be sad to lose my best friend so maybe I might come to your rescue." 

There it was. The label I hated and prided myself upon both at once. 

I loved it because it meant I was hers in some way at least. Her best friend. But was it wrong to want more than just the title of friend? 

Yes. Yes, it was, when it came to her. 

I'm not in the business of attempting to drive a wedge in our friendship, so I have no choice but to be content with what she wants. With how she sees me. 

"My personal White Knight, huh?" 

"Maybe," she says, resting her chin on my shoulder and grinning at me with a hint of a tease. "Or maybe you could be my White Knight and I'll be your Queen." 

Does she know she's fucking killing me right now? 

She's been doing this a lot lately. Flirting. Ever since those dudes from her school asked her out and she turned them down and they kept chasing after her, she's realized there's a certain power she holds over them and made messing with them her favorite pastime. 

She's become a hedonist and she's chosen to practice her charm on me. 

It's working damn well, I realize, and I shift a little to hide the swell in my pants. I'd sooner shoot myself than have her discover how she affected me. 

"You sure the word White suits me? I'm hardly a saint." 

"As long it's not yellow, I'm cool." 

Yellow Knight did sound gross. 

She turns her head and rests it on my shoulder, staring at the horizon as the evening breeze dances around us. 

My eyes are instead trained on her, memorizing every part of her. That adorable upturned button nose, the graceful arc of her eyebrows, emerald eyes, perfectly kissable lips. Brown hair that cascades over her shoulders in soft curls. 

I don't realize I'm smiling until I feel my facial muscles begin to strain. I don't realize I'm tearing up until the wind brushes the stinging saltwater in my eyes. 

Twenty-four hours from now she won't be in the States anymore. 

Twenty-four hours from now I'll lose her forever. 

She didn't have an excuse to come back. 

All her life her mother has known she hated her father, so Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations were a certain no. And her father was the only significant thing she was leaving behind in Blackwood Creek. 

I was the secret she indulged in when no one was looking. Just as she was mine. 

"They'll notice our absence if we don't head back soon," she whispers, breaking the silence. 

It's been ten minutes already since we've wandered off. She has a way of doing this. Making the passage of time blur into a single moment. It's like we've been here for three seconds only.  

"I know." I say. 

Yet neither of us moves. 

"But just a moment more." I whisper, voicing her unspoken words. 

I wrap an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer. Savoring the final seconds we'll ever have before she's whisked away to another life and I'm stuck in the past, pulling myself through life without her. 

She's crawled up my heart and made a snug little home there, and no matter where she goes, there will always be a piece of her that lives in me. 

"Yeah," she says in a soft voice, and I press my cheek to the crown of her head as I let myself freefall into the embrace. Her arms wrap around my waist and we sit there silently for a minute longer. 

God, she's all I want. 

And all I can never have.  

When we head back downstairs, her first and me a minute after, the room feels different somehow now. Suffocating. Confining. Wrong. 

I see Callista walk up to Destiny Solace and smile, and they fall into conversation again (that Destiny girl is annoying, always fucking smiling) I watch her from the corner of my eye, watch her every time I get a moment's reprieve from the prying eyes of the people around me. 

I watch her for the last time ever, absorbing her every move, her every expression, and her every feature, and cataloging it all in my most cherished recesses. It's mostly filled with memories of just her. 

The prospect of her moving away was so minuscule, nonexistent, that I'd never given it thought. I'd immersed myself in every moment we'd spent together, yet it still didn't feel enough. I don't think I'll ever have enough of her. 

We locked eyes one final time before she left. 

It was enough for the grief to splinter me. 

Never again, was all I could think. Never again those soft embraces of coffee and cocoa. Never again secret walks down the forest at the edge of the town, never again playful grins when no one was looking. 

Never again. 

And as she slipped past the front gates, she ripped out a piece of my heart and stole it away with her, leaving me incomplete. She'll always own that piece of my heart, even she'll never know it. 

My heart couldn't be broken any further. It was a verity of the highest order. 

Yet four days later, what was then inconceivable was proved to be, in fact, quite possible. 

Four days later was the day I wholly shattered, and that was the day I built my walls up so high, that I'd never be deceived ever again. I'd never trust, never let myself be used. 

Callista Willow was a name that was now associated with the deepest — the deepest — sense of hatred and contempt. 

Tuesday — September 5, 2023 

She does the last thing I expect. 

She bursts into laughter. 

She buries her face in her palms as red lines her cheeks and she starts laughing so badly, that a tear escapes her eyes. 

This. 

This is the psychotic side of this bitch that I keep talking about. I don't think what-the-fuck can cover what I'm feeling right right now. 

The momentary perplexity washes away and the rage that simmers beneath my flesh right now begins aching for release. She deceived me, she ruined me, she ruined the ones I care about. And then she dares to fucking laugh about it right in my face. 

"This isn't fucking funny!" 

I lose it. I grab her by her unbuttoned collar and pull her toward me, raging anguish driving me to commit actions I won't be able to come back from. 

Maybe I wanted to fuck her before. Maybe. But all I want to do right now is kill her. End this girl who sets me on fire and then chills me to the bones over and over, giving me a damn whiplash. 

I can't believe I held on to hope. That maybe she'd feel remorse for what she'd done. Why did I ever, is the question I can't answer. Don't want to answer. 

"This isn't a joke, Willow. What you did, it— it—" 

Do I want to give her more than she's already taken? Lay my cards bare and show exactly how the memory of that night breaks me every damned time? 

It seemed impossible that she could have, only minutes before our moment on the balcony, set into motion the events that would lead to my parents' falling out. But it was possible because it had happened. 

And here she is, laughing. 

I let loose a breath when I noticed she no longer was laughing. 

"Is that what this has been about, all along?" she asks, — a low gasp leaving her all of a sudden as if struck with realization — that damned siren-like voice softening, and an apprehensive look crosses her face. 

I've called her out, I've done what I could. If she still wants to play innocent and refuses to shed her guise, there isn't anything I can do. I'll let her be. She isn't going to budge either way. I know the truth about her, and that is enough for me. I'm not going to be a pawn again. 

"You're fucking kidding m— Chance, you seriously can't be that mad at me for something as little as that. It was just a joke." 

She's digging her grave, and mine, too. 

My resolve was to ruin her as she had me, but emotional retaliation wasn't an option anymore. Her tears were superficial; they lasted for the moment and then they were gone, and she was back to being her cheery, rotten self. 

If only bouncing back was so easy for all of us. 

Physical pain was one I could inflict and know that it hurt. Hit its mark. 

"Just a joke?" I snarl, shaking her by her collar like that'd give me an acceptable answer. Her eyes widen with a sense of realization that she's fucked up. Yes, yes, she's fucked up. So, so bad. 

I'd scoured her emerald eyes so many times already, looking for a hint of hope that maybe she would atone for her sins — even if atonement was very, very unlikely. Nothing. 

She was shaking again. 

Her backbone was made of plastic if it kept snapping so easily. 

Her hands are pushing at my chest, at my grip on her. She doesn't want me near her. Well too fucking bad. 

"Listen, I'm sorry, alright? I didn't think— I didn't think it'd be that big of a deal back then, I'm sorry—" 

Of course, she didn't, because to her it wasn't, but to me? It was everything. It was my life, my sanity, my childhood; it was everything. And she just doesn't fucking get that, does she? 

I let one hand let go of her, one still fisting her dress shirt. 

I kick her legs out from under her and use the momentum my grip on her offers me to increase the magnitude of her fall. 

A small scream leaves her. 

I push her to the ground and straddle her, one hand locked loosely around her throat. My thumb brushes against her jaw and I find her pulse beating an untamed rhythm. 

Would I be able to do it, hurt her? 

An image of ceramic shattering, of agonized screams, of silent tears and broken sobs, and a dank atmosphere of tangible wretchedness blinds me. Of shouts of denial, of unanswered pleas, of moments when I didn't understand any of it yet it still felt all so real, of dread and disbelief clouding everything else. Of the terror of separation and the mute horror that accompanied it. Of the late nights of peeking through peepholes and the silent pressing of ears to doors. 

It doesn't matter if I can or cannot do it. 

I have to. 

Because that's what you do for the people you love. You avenge them. You destroy the cause of their ruination, even though the price you pay is the sanity of your soul. That is what love is. 

Something Callista Willow would never know or understand; not when standing above the corpses of the ones she lay waste to, not when gasping for air at her deathbed. 

Some people were made cruel by circumstance. Some were just born it. And Callista fell into the latter. 

I wish I could hate her more than I hate myself for not walking away the day I first met her. 

"What?" Callista begins, rousing me out of my thoughts, "Can't hurt me?" 

The jibe hits its mark. I've been unmoving for a noticeable amount of time, and she's picked up exactly what's the problem here. 

"Shut your fucking mouth." I snap. 

"You can't, can you?" She wraps her palm around my wrist, fingernails digging in. "Need some inspiration? Let's fucking talk about Sunday night, Monday afternoon, Monday evening, oh, right the fuck now." 

It's like she wants me to bite. 

That was different, everything she stated. The earlier times. That sort of pain was one I didn't think twice before inflicting. That kind of pain made my cock twitch, made her panties soak with desire. That much, I knew. 

And maybe that's what's going to happen now as well. 

She makes a throaty sort of low gasp when my finger brushes her jaw again, and I realize exactly what position we're in. There it was, that rush in my blood, that desire that made my cock stiffen. 

I haven't even touched her anywhere that matters yet. 

I lean forward, pressing my weight on hers, supporting myself by propping a forearm beside her head. 

"Do you know my mother couldn't be in the same room as my father for an entire week?" 

The Devil cannot be redeemed. The same goes for his female counterpart. I don't know why I'm trying. Trying to make her understand, trying to make her contrite. All I can do is reduce her blackened flame to charred ash. 

Yet I'm still trying. 

I brush my lips against her collarbone and watch goosebumps skitter across the sensitive skin. Proximity was the chink in her armor. 

"Couldn't sleep beside him for a month?" 

The grief over their fallout was calling to me, but one inhale of cocoa and coffee and roasted almonds, and Callista held my undivided attention again. 

I hated that scent. And I needed it like I needed oxygen. 

"I would have done anything for you, Willow," I whisper, slipping a hand under her skirt and finding porcelain skin pulsing with lust. "Anything." 

My rolled-up sleeves leave my skin bare, and silt and sand scrape against my forearm from where it's pinned against the earth. 

"That literally doesn't make sense," she breathes all of a sudden, her brows knitting in confusion while her body arches into my touch. "The thing about your parents." 

"What truly doesn't make sense—" I begin through clenched teeth, dismissing her statement and pulling her closer toward me so that I'm kneeling between her legs and her torturous cunt is pressed against my groin, "—is how you managed to fake nearly a decade of friendship and then happily turn your back on me." 

She pushes her hips onto me even further, grinding herself against my trousers to soothe her desire, chasing release. 

But this isn't about her, this is about me. About my need for her, my need for relief. As wrong as it is, it's all I can think about right now. 

She whimpers something unintelligible as I flip her skirt up and let it pool around her waist, baring her innocent white panties for the world to see. 

"What doesn't make sense, Willow," I whisper, my lips hovering only inches away from her cunt, so close that I can smell the arousal that leaves a dark spot at the center of her panties. "Is everything we're doing right now."  

"Chanc— Oh." 

I press my tongue flat against her panty-covered pussy, licking her all the way to her clean-shaven mound, my lips pressing to the skin there before my teeth clamp around it and leave a mark. 

The sound of her moan turns me on so bad, impossibly so, my breaths accelerating and growing heavier by the second. 

Her lips are parted wide as she pants with breathy cries of pleasure. I grab her cheeks and spit in her mouth in a vulgar gesture, slapping a hand over it aggressively and forcing her to swallow, watching her gag and choke on it between whimpers.  

"Shh," I whisper, "Or do you want the world to know just how much you enjoy being violated, hm?" 

Tears splatter from her eyes and paint her cheeks with transparent wetness. Her body writhes beneath mine, the pain and filth making her ache for pleasure and more pain. 

I grin brutishly and tease her pussy over her panties with my index, soft touches that aren't enough to satisfy her. The sound she makes is muffled by my palm and sounds an awful lot like a whine. 

"Needy bitch." I slap her wet cunt hard, making her cry out in pain and pleasure. More tears trickle down the corners of her eyelids. 

"If you want to be used so bad, don't fucking cry when you're not able to take it." I slap her cunt again, the sting against my palm reassuring me that it hurt her sevenfold. "There's no White Knight coming to save your pussy this time." 

I let my palm abandon its hold around her mouth and grip both sides of her hips with my hands, bracing myself above her as my heart beats like a madman's and my breath goes feral. 

Fingers wind into my hair and I lift my head to find her fisting my hair in one hand, making my eyes lock with hers. 

I'm still panting, eyelids heavy, and yet it's just not enough. 

"If I give myself to you," she begins, forcing her lids to stay open, her legs trembling with unsated desire, "You're going to answer every one of my questions, straight to the point and no embellishment or unresolved trauma stories." 

"Give yourself to me?" I can't keep the comic disbelief out of my voice.  

I laugh. 

I fucking laugh. 

I throw my head back and laugh so hard, I'm doubling over and clutching my stomach. I rest my brow on her abdomen, my shoulders shaking, until the rest of my laughter subsides, as I let what she said sink in. 

Either she's pitifully naïve or she's just plain stupid. 

"Give yourself to me?" 

She remains unrelenting in the face of my outright incredulity, a rock amidst my thundering storm. 

"Oh, baby," I cup her face in my palm, still grinning like a nutcase. After everything I've said and done to her, she still thinks she has a choice. I explain, "Your offering yourself to me is the path of least resistance."  

I brush my knuckles down her cheekbones, pressing my forehead to hers. "You shake your head and say no, and I'll fuck the fight out of you anyway. Still struggle against me, and I'll ask Marcus to hold you down and take your mouth while I destroy that whorish cunt with my cock. Lord knows he's been wanting a piece of you since yesterday." 

As filthy as it sounds, if Marcus ever did touch her, I'd burn the skin off his hand and then spend the rest of the day fucking the memory of him out of her so that all she ever remembers and knows is my touch. Only mine. 

My arousal strains against my trousers as her lips curl back and she snaps the hold lust and desire have on her, her hands fisting my hair harshly before she throws my head back with the force of a catapult, my neck arching painfully with the magnitude of it. 

She pushes down her skirt and then pushes away from me to stand, but I grab her by the ankle and drag her back, tutting her at her behavior. 

"Bad girl." I scold, flipping her sideways to slap her ass. "Very, very bad girl." 

She yelps and I force her legs open, grunting as my muscles flex to hold her in place as she tries to kick me square in the face. 

"Want me to stop?" I taunt, unfastening my belt and slowly sliding them out of the loops.  

She clenches her jaw and narrows her eyes at me, her body shaking with adrenalin, and I'm damn sure she'd be bordering on exhaustion without the influence of the hormone. Yet she refuses to beg. 

"Your choice," I shrug, grabbing her wrists and wrapping the belt around it. 

Before I'm able to lock the belt in place, her palms fist and she knocks them into the side of my face so hard, that my neck twists sideways and cracks with the force of it. 

"I'm not a whore, Ambrose." She derides my being, slipping her hands out of the unclasped belt and pushing back, faster this time. Disdain drips from the way she says my name — mocks my name. 

"You're right," I say, standing up along with her, lips stretching into a contemptuous smile. "You're not any common whore, you're my whore, and I'll be here to remind you of it every time you forget." 

She swallows and backs away, her body swaying from the exertion as she stumbles on air. 

She keeps her gaze locked on me, not trusting me to not grab her again the second her guard drops. 

Once a considerable distance is secured between the two of us, she turns on her heels and races down the path, turning the corner and instantly on the street where her house is located. I respected my father enough to not go against his order of don't-fucking-go-anywhere-near-the-Huxley-estate. 

I rest my hands on my hips, my head dropping to eye the discarded belt thoughtfully. 

For all my bark, whether or not I was going to fuck her was still a matter of question. Hurting her and leaving her to die just— it didn't sit right with me. 

The weight of everything I confessed, everything I was so close to reliving — it slowly began filtering through the fog of lust, slowly began reclaiming its place at the forefront of my mind. 

Rage and intoxication were dampened by a much heavier, much more lifeless emotion. One that weighed me down every goddamned time. 

I can never do what truly matters. A fucking failure, that I am.