Christian Grey, easily one of the most influential and powerful men in the whole entire world, was on his knees before me. Instead of his usual demeanour of having everything in control, Christian was folded into submission, utterly vulnerable before me. It almost felt like I had broken him. 

"Christian?" I whispered, my own hands shaking at my side. 

He tilted his face towards mine. His grey eyes glazed over with a layer of tears that were welling up in his beautiful eyes. Just his face alone was enough to tug at my heart strings. It pained me to watch him like this. I was reminded of the times of happiness we shared with each other, I could recall the joy in his eyes. Yet here he was, suffering alongside me. 

"You left." He muttered, not an accusation but rather a defeated statement. 

"Christian..." That was the only thing I had promised him I would never do, but I had done. But what had he expected my reaction to be? I did not believe there was a woman in the world who would have held her head high and stayed after finding out she had been cheated on. Did he expect me to still marry him? Did he expect me to congratulate him? "... you cheated."

The tears brimmed over his eyelids, forming streams down either sides of his cheek as he kept his gaze on me. I could tell that he was hurting and I knew that he knew I was hurting. I was lost. I did not know how to move on from here, even though I really wanted to.

"Ana," He started, "I can't even begin to apologize for what I did. I know I could never make it up to you."

That was a good start. I felt my soul warm up amidst this icy climate, and my inner goddess leaned back in her resting chair watching the apology unfold.

"But i'm so sorry, Anastasia." Christian brought his hands up towards me, palms upward in a plea for forgiveness. 

He was genuine and sincere, everything in place for the perfect apology. Yet, I felt like I was getting shortchanged. "What for?" 

Confusion registered in his eyes at my words. "For Leila."

"I know," I grit my teeth together, I was asking a question I did not want the answer to. "but what exactly for, Christian?"

Christian dropped his hands to his sides, "Ana, she was so broken."

As he began, I felt my soul detach from my own body. In fact, I forced it to. I had to protect myself for whatever was about to come out of his wretched mouth. The same mouth that had kissed my lips, nuzzled my neck, and done many magical things to my body. It was the mouth that would break me, I was sure of it. 

"Staring at Leila, so filthy and so shattered, I felt so responsible for making her that way. I felt like it was my fault. I wanted to help, I honestly just wanted to fix her." 

My heart sank, "Fix her how?"

"I just started by cleaning her, I had no idea how long she had been out on the streets."

"Clean her how?" 

"I felt like I owed it to her, Ana. She put me together at a time that I was in pieces, and I knew I had to do the same. I wa-"

"Clean. Her. How." I repeated.

"I ran her a bath and put her in the tub."

No. The image began creating itself in my mind. "She was naked?" Dumb question.

"Yes."

The pain surged through me and I bit down on my tongue to feel the pain in a spot I could pinpoint. "What else?"

"I bathed her."

"You touched her?" 

Stop. Please. My inner goddess begged, off her reclining chair and up on her feet searching for noise cancelling head phones. She was already crying, her mascara running down her face like streaks of dirt.

"I showered her." 

A last image resurfaced in my mind. "You stroked her hair?"

"Yes." 

He stroke my hair. He showered my hair. He was mine. I had to be bold. "And you said you did something else?" I wanted him to say it again, I wanted to hear it again. 

"Yes, I made love to her." His confession was a whisper, so ragged and torn.

Hold up. "Made... love?" I could feel my head start to spin. "You said you fucked her." The latter was something I was just getting comfortable with, and had begun to accept. My boyfriend, soon to be fiance, just getting it out of his system one last time. The former...

"Yes. I wanted to fix her, to make her whole."

"In my bed?" Was all I could manage. 

"HELL NO, ANA." He was urgent and alarmed that I would think of him in such a way. That he would defile my bed with another woman.

But he had defiled my entire life. I already thought of him in the most horrendous way. But still, I heaved a sigh of relief. My room was safe. The next time I returned to my apartment, to this apartment, I would feel safe in my room. At least he left me that. 

"Ana?" 

"Christian. You made love to me... only me."

"Ana." My name on his lips felt like their were at the other end of a tunnel. 

All along I had thought Christian had merely satisfied his sadistic self by fucking Leila in all his kinky ways. Never would it have crossed my mind that he had chosen to make love to her, slow and sweet. Slow... and ... 

"ANA?" I heard the alarm in his voice, and his tone escalated octaves.

I heard my front door open and watched as Ethan stepped into the living room, his eyes filled with regret at his decision of leaving me alone with Christian. I kept my eyes on him, but he was slowly turning upside down. Why was he turning? And then I felt myself crash onto the warmth of my Christian, just in time before my head could hit the ground.

My world darkened.