God of War: Chapter 41

“You need ice cream? More candy floss? Hugs?” Cecy asks from beside me, her eyes a pool of jade-colored kindness.

“Hugs, please.” I lean my head against her shoulder and wrap my arms around her middle as she holds me close.

I’ve been demanding a lot of hugs from everyone around me lately. Probably because I won’t get them as much as I’d like once I’m admitted to the institution in a few days.

To say I’m completely comfortable with that would be a massive lie, but I’m finally ready to undergo this experience on my own, even if a part of me will always dread the idea of putting that ‘mentally unstable’ label on myself.

“You want to watch another film?” Cecy asks as the credits for Mean Girls play on the screen.

“Sure.”

“Bridget Jones’s Diary’s second film?”

“Yup!”

“You’re so predictable.” She grins down at me as she scrolls through Netflix and then selects the film.

“I’m just religious about my comfort things.” I rub my face against her shoulder, fighting the onslaught of tears that I seem to be plagued with lately. “Thanks for coming at such short notice. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without you.”

“Always. We’re ride or die, remember?”

“Hell yeah. Even if Jeremy hates me for confiscating you.”

She laughs. “He’ll live.”

“But will he live like a normal human being or will he live by blowing some shit up and ruining people’s existence?”

“He promised to behave.”

“Oooh. You’re taming him.”

“More like we’re in this together, you know? A relationship needs some compromises from both sides for it to work.”

“That’s only applicable if both parties are in their right state of mind. Pretty sure there’s an exception for insane partners.” I stare at the opening scene of the film but don’t register anything.

“Ava, you’re not insane,” Cecy tells me in a soft but firm voice.

“I’m just getting there?”

“Ava…”

“It’s okay. The first step of overcoming a hurdle is to admit it exists.”

For the past ten days, I’ve been thinking about all my freshly returned memories. About the turmoil and the paralyzing fear I felt during my marriage. I truly believed Eli when he said he’d kill me if I didn’t obey and follow his plan.

During the first two years of the marriage, I was scared he’d make good on his promise, and he didn’t make things better by forcing me into rehab, changing therapists and treatments, admitting me to the ward, and cutting me out of my clubbing circles.

The day when I held a knife and demanded he let me go was my tipping point, after a panic attack. But here’s what he doesn’t know, the reason behind that episode wasn’t only because my discontent had reached its peak. The actual trigger was that I saw a video of him at a party that I couldn’t attend—and he didn’t ask me to—because I was a mess.

At said party, Gemma touched his arm and openly flirted with him.

While he didn’t look particularly interested, he also didn’t attempt to push her away.

I was livid that he’d locked me up while he paraded around with other women. I was paranoid he’d soon bring a lover home and flaunt it in my face.

So even though I was frightened, I had to destroy him before he did the same to me. And most of all, I’d had enough of cowering from him. Like a bird trapped in a cage, I wanted to shatter the bars and fly out, even if my wings were broken in the process and I had to bleed all over the floor.

But I never meant to stab him. I really didn’t. The moment I did, I dropped the knife and couldn’t stop staring at the blood that gushed out of him.

Even then, I realized, I’d never truly hated him. The thought of him dying because of me hurt more than anything he’d ever done to me.

I didn’t realize I was walking backward until he shouted my name and I fell down the stairs.

Having amnesia was both a blessing and a curse.

A blessing because I was no longer scared of Eli and reverted to my personality at uni, and, in retrospect, my old feelings for him resurfaced. In the two years we were married, I didn’t dare admit those feelings, because the fear of accidentally provoking him and getting killed was much stronger.

A curse because now that I remember everything, the pain has doubled, and tripled until my chest can no longer carry the pieces of my broken heart.

Yes, I left Eli, but my feelings for him linger on like bitter lime stuck at the back of my throat.

“Is this about the divorce?” Cecy asks slowly.

She didn’t see me break down in uncontrollable chest-heaving sobs before I signed those papers, but she heard all about it from Ari.

Mama told me maybe I should wait, and even Papa, who’s been begging me to divorce Eli since I married him, said maybe I should do it when I’m calmer.

But I signed them. Even if I messed up the papers with my tears.

“It’s over now,” I whisper.

“Do you want it to be over?”

“It has to be over.”

“Says who?” My friend grabs my shoulders and sits facing me. “This is your choice, Ava. If you don’t want the divorce, don’t go through it.”

“I asked for it. I threatened him with suicide if he didn’t let me go.”

“Oh.”

I lower my eyes. Cecy is the only person I’ve told this, mainly because I didn’t want to worry my family. “Oh? Is that all you have to say?”

“I was wondering why someone like Eli would hand over the divorce papers so easily, and now, I understand. He’s willing to sacrifice his only red line for your safety.”

“More like he didn’t want blood on his hands. He’s probably glad he finally got rid of the loose screw.”

“Ava…” She takes my hand in hers. “First of all, you’re not a loose screw. You’re just someone who’s struggling by no fault of their own, and you made the hard decision to be admitted into a place you loathe in an attempt to get better. You’re so strong and impressive, I don’t even know how you do it. So I will not hear any self-deprecating rubbish again or I will smack you.

“Second of all, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Eli didn’t demand to be your guardian for controlling purposes. He really thought your parents, Ari, and even I were too soft and unable to handle hard decisions that could benefit you. We all knew you had alcoholism issues, but we were scared that if we pushed you to quit, you’d break. Not Eli. In fact, he berated us for babying you and letting your state deteriorate so badly. He got punched by Uncle Cole for it, by the way, but he still said he’d do it his way and none of us were allowed to interfere. That therapist he kicked out of the continent? He was caught on the verge of selling your and other patients’ confidential information to some pharmaceutical conglomerate, so Eli made sure he could no longer breathe in your vicinity.

“That first admission into the psyche ward was due to pressure from everyone after your constant panic attacks and fugue states. Uncle Cole was about to take him to court for negligence if he didn’t agree. He resisted it to the very end, but even after it happened, he visited you daily and spent a few hours with you no matter how busy he was. Sometimes, you recognized him, other times, you didn’t, but he was by your side every day until you used the sheets to try and strangle yourself. He discharged you the following day, despite the doctor’s’ advice to put you on intensive watch and keep you for further observation.

“He threatened to have the entire institution shut down if anyone stood in his way as he carried you out. He vehemently refused to admit you again after that and chose to look after you himself. Sam told me he barely slept because he wanted to personally watch and keep you out of danger. He’s the one who carried you back to bed from your sleepwalks. If you fell into a puddle of mud, he’s the one who bathed you and changed your clothes. He banned alcohol from the house and even stopped drinking it himself.

“After you fell down the stairs and woke up in the hospital without memories, he tried to start anew. He knew you might get worse, but he held on to the small hope that you’ll get better instead. He forbid anyone from telling you any of the painful memories and wanted you to live normally, even if it’s temporarily. When he saw that you rekindled your relationship with the cello after a long time, he became a charity’s top Patreon and forced them to invite you for a performance. He knew that if they gave you the chance once, you’d charm them with your skills and the invitations would become organic. He kept his distance, not because you stabbed him or he hated you, but because the doctor thought his face triggered you.”

My chin trembles as fragmented memories of Eli picking me up, carrying me, and gently putting me to bed play in my head in a loop. Several realizations hit me as well.

He didn’t have missionary sex with me in the beginning, because he believed looking at his face would trigger me. He only changed that after I demanded it and he saw I was okay.

He never took off his clothes, because he didn’t want me to see the stab scar and somehow regain my memories of that time.

Eli didn’t care that I stabbed him. He only cared that I’d be hurt if I were to remember.

The man who killed someone in front of me in cold blood, then used the murder to tie me to him and made a toxic number of people disappear because they breathed wrong near me shouldn’t be this psychotically endearing.

He just shouldn’t.

“Ava…why are you crying?” Cecy wipes my cheeks with her sleeve.

“Because I’m willing to forget that he forced me to marry him. Hell, a part of me already forgot that. And another part liked that he forced me, because I have stubborn pride that forbids me from admitting I wanted that. Cecy…I think I love him. No. Pretty sure I’m in love with him, which is why I broke down when I recalled everything and was hit by the lies. I couldn’t handle the betrayal or the fact that everything could be a lie.”

“Finally. It’s about time you realize what we’ve all known for years.” She smiles. “Are you going to talk to him?”

I shake my head frantically.

“Ava…you might not see him for months or years after you’re admitted.”

“That’s okay. I can’t trust myself not to splinter to pieces and become an emotional mess if I see his face. I let myself believe in an impossible fairy tale where we’d form a happy family together, but it was all an illusion.”

“If anyone can make it happen, it’s you.”

“Not in my current state. I stabbed him, Cecy. Even if he’s able to overlook that, I can’t. I’m terrified about the thought of hurting him again—even unintentionally. It’s why my brain chose amnesia. The idea that I caused him pain broke me so much that I couldn’t survive with my memories intact.”

“So you’ll give up? Just like that?”

“Just like that. Unless I make sure I’m no longer a threat to him, and most importantly, to myself, so that he doesn’t have to deal with an invalid.”

“You’re not an invalid. And you can tell him what you think. If the unholy number of calls he makes to Ari and me is any indication, I’m sure he’ll wait for as long as it takes.”

“I don’t want him to wait. It’s better if he moves on.”

“That’s virtually impossible.”

“He’s a man with a lot of responsibilities on his shoulders. He’ll get over this bleak chapter in his life.”

“And you’ll let him?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Ava…you turned into a raging witch at uni whenever you saw a female around him. You made it your mission to chase them away as if they were poisonous flies, and we both know you did that because you couldn’t handle seeing him with someone else. You still can’t, considering all the murder plans you’ve had about other women flirting with him over the past few months. And now you’re telling me you’ll willingly watch him move on?”

“I have to. I have to be mature enough to let go of what’s never been mine.” My next words come out in a strangled tone. “Even if it hurts.”

“Aww, come here.”

Cecily hugs me as I cry softly against her.

I wish it was the last time I cried because of Eli King.

But my tears seem to believe they belong to him.

Like everything else about me.