What if Iwere better at taking what I wanted?
What if Iwasn’t so concerned about the future and where it would lead me?
What if Ilet myself fall, just this once?
It was difficult wanting love when you were terrified of letting it in. My past dates and boyfriends told me I was too frigid, too stiff, too cold.Icy, as one of them had said. They never understood that I couldn’t let go of control so easily.
Even now, as I walked through the dark hallway toward where I remembered the staircase was, it took everything in me not to peek into these other rooms. Not to look for a study or something similar, just so I could find out more about mycaptor. But curiosity killed a cat, or at least that's how the saying went, and I was already too involved to get out of this unscathed.
The light was on in the foyer, and I thanked the universe for small miracles as I went down the stairs, trying to shake off the icy tendrils of anxiety crawling over my skin, but the lack of sleep and the adrenaline from last night were not a good mix. And the further down I went, the stronger the chills erupting all over my skin became.
For some silly fucking reason, I trusted that Nicolas wouldn't hurt me.
At least he wouldn't hurt me unless he had to. And if there's one thing books and TV shows have taught me, it's that people like me, unsuspecting civilians, usually ended up being collateral damage in the mess they’d found themselves in. And who's to say that I would ever be able to get back to my normal life?
Nicolas didn't say anything about letting me go, and I blamed my frazzled mind for not asking him to let me go. I understood that a man like him, with his position, needed to be careful, but there was nothing I could offer him. He wore the face of a man exhausted by the world, by the duty he carried, and my fucked-up mind immediately came up with the not-so-wonderful idea that I could fix him.
I could barely hold myself together, not to mention trying to fix a man who dealt in things that were extremely foreign to me. Even if I allowed myself to entertain the idea of the two of us together, there was no way that our worlds could coexist. And even if it weren’t for the whole illegal-dealings-and-illegal-life part of his world, I still stood by what I said to him.
He might think I'm the answer to all his prayers, but he had years of life to live before he could even decide that he wanted a family, and I wasn't about to waste my time on yet another emotionally unavailable guy.
So, control it was.
Control over my emotions.
Control over my actions.
Control over every single aspect of my life.
I was sufficiently self-aware to understand that these were coping mechanisms I’d adopted in order to function in a society that wouldn't want me if I ever allowed my chaotic thoughts to spill out. I was the reliable one. I was the golden child. I was the one my mom called whenever my sister did something crazy, and I knew I would keep on being that person no matter how much it hurt.
And it did fucking hurt.
What hurt the most was the factthat I never really got to be a child. The responsibilities that were piled onto my back from a very young age taught me that there were no other people I could rely on. But what kept hurting was the fact that my family no longer saw me as a big sister, a daughter, a granddaughter or a niece.
No, they saw me as the solution to their problems. As the rational one that could swoop in and save the day, because I so rarely allowed my emotions to spill into the ether.
Unlike them.
Shaking my head, I tried erasing the thoughts. Now was not the time to wallow in self-pity, nor to spiral about everything else that bothered me. I had a bigger fish to fry, and judging by the growling of my stomach, the biggest one was the fact that I was hungry.
Given that I didn't get to have dinner last night and the last thing I’d eaten was an apple sometime around three in the afternoon, it was no surprise I was getting hangry.
I just fucking hoped this wasn't one of those houses, or well... mansions, that didn't even have eggs or bread. I would kill for an omelette right now, and I swear if Nicolas Moretti only ate things some fancy chef prepared for him, I would commit a crime. No fucking questions asked.
Going through yet another hallway after leaving what looked like a living room, I realized I was going deeper into the house, hoping the kitchen would be somewhere nearby.
"This house is a fucking maze," I muttered to myself, feeling more and more lost, when I saw light spilling from one of the rooms not too far from me.
And heard something breaking. Or crashing.
A loud, "Fuck!", made me jump, rethinking this whole idea of chasing food when I should've stayed in my room. I had water. I had a bed. No one ever died from not eating for one whole day, right?
More grumbling echoed,and whatever devil sat on my left shoulder pushed me forward. Maybe I was finally losing my mind after all these years of holding the reins of my life too tightly.
Even my breathing sounded too fucking loud, or at least it felt that way, but the smell of the food wafting from the lit room erased all rational thought. Instead of retreating, I pushed forward, entering what might as well have been my ending.
I wished I’d gone back to my room.