Chapter 133

Stella

I can't feel my body. My limbs feel numb, unable to perceive or feel the world all around me. My feet carrying me back to Silas's car, aimlessly, opening up the door and sitting inside with a look of distress written all over my face.

I stared straight ahead at the road. I wonder where it will take me this time, what disappointments await for me in the near future. I'm sure that Silas has told Sebastian of this venture, spilling the secret that I wish to keep from him, only wanting to open up about it when we were alone and with no prying eyes watching us.

Silas stares at the side of my face. I do not indulge in his gaze, closing my eyes to black out the reality that I am finding myself in. I slowly suck in, filling my lungs with as much air as possible, trying to desperately ground myself back into reality, before slowly exhaling and opening my eyes.

“Stella?” Silas’ voice fills my ears, like a gentle melody, so soothing the anxiety that has formed deep within my bones. My body trembles. “Are you okay? Do you want to…talk about it?”

I pause and turn to look at my brother. I tilt my head to the side, wondering if he is simply going through the motions of what brother should say or if he genuinely means the question that he asked. The look on his face reads nothing but genuine curiosity, and love, his feelings towards me as my older brother on full display.

With Silas, I feel so safe. I know that no matter what I say to him, he will not be one to judge me nor will he pass judgment on the things that I have said or done. After all, he has done much worse things than I ever will in my life, so who is he really to judge?

“I just feel so lost with Adrian. I always feel so conflicted and I never know what to do, every choice that I've made until this point having been wrong and pushing us further away from one another,” I open up to my brother with ease, the words spilling my mouth before I can't even think about them.

Silas watches me in silence. He simply nod his head while I speak, not wanting to interrupt me while I load all of the baggage that has been weighing me down in the past year.

“I truly cannot understand how he can bring himself to marry somebody like Clara,” the tears begin to fall from my eyes, rolling down my cheeks in hot streams, ruining my makeup. “she is so vile and disgusting, and she always treats the world, as if she is owed anything and everything, expecting people to automatically bend to her will just because she thinks that's how life works.”

The car is silent except for the sounds of my pain cries. I cover my face with my hands, not wanting Silas to see just how much my heart breaks in the situation, how my heart shatters knowing that Adrian is soon to be out of my life once he marries Clara instead of coming back to me.

Silas places his hand on my shoulder. I tend at his touch but say nothing, allowing my sobs to leave my body. My brother gently rubs my back, his hand as light as his air as he rubs circles between my shoulder blades, rooting me back into the car and into reality.

“I feel so lost,” I admit, choking over my words, “I have no idea what to do in this moment or what to say to him to make him realize that the choice he is making is the wrong one. I want nothing but his happiness, and if he decides to marry Clara, then he is doomed for a life of sadness…it breaks my heart.”

“Sometimes,” Silas begins. I unveil my face and look at him, vision blurry from the tears as I try to blink it away. He sucks in a breath. “Sometimes people cannot see beyond their own needs and problems.”

I swallow the lump in my throat and remain quiet, not wanting to interrupt my brother.

“People do not know of the problems that sit right in front of them. They cover it with a blanket and tell themselves that they will come back to it later, but they never do. They know that,” Silas continues. “Adrian is simply acting on the choices that he has right in front of him. The future is being held from him and he feels as if he has no choice in the matter, his story planned out for him.”

“But I can stop it,” I gush, unable to control the compelling feeling of arguing my case, “I can save him from making a stupid mistake like this.”

Silas, though, has different plans. He simply shakes his head at me, silencing me, and rests his hand on top of mine, my tears now staining the tips of his finger fingers. I take in a deep breath, my body slowly feeling like it is coming back to earth.

“Unfortunately, Stella,” Silas begins, his voice both soft and filled with a tough love that only a brother could give to me, “that is not your choice to make.”

I sit with his words. I let them brew around in the back of my mind, compelling me to put my own mind at ease that Adrian knows what he's doing. That the choices he makes are his own and of his own volition.

If he wants to marry Clara because he feels the need to, to save himself of having her blood on his hands…then so be it. I will let him go and do what it is that he wants to do. I will let him walk down the aisle and marry a woman who simply wishes to use him, to suck him dry, to leave him stranded in the middle of the desert, if it means that she will be safe.

I will let him marry the villain in our lives.

“You clearly still have feelings for Adrian,” Silas notes, our eyes meeting. I begin to shake my head, ready to refute this claim, but Silas simply holds up a hand. I fall silent. “it is unfair to Sebastian. You know this.”

“I do, yes,” I feel the same begin to build up on my chest. Feeling like a weight that has attached itself around my ankles. A ball and chain that I will forever be connected to. This wait will be sure to drown me, to bring me my inevitable demise in this game of cat and mouse that I am in with fate.

“I will keep your secret for now, okay?” Silas breathes out. Just as I am about to thank him, he opens his mouth and speaks again, “but you will need to be the one to make up your mind. You can't keep stringing both men along in the hopes that nothing will change. You need to make up your mind soon, yeah?”

I not in response. I know that my brother is right, that his observant nature has caught on to the fact that I am still in love with Adrian, despite my constant denial of it. I stare at the road ahead, watching as Silas drives us away from the hospital and into the heart of the city.

The thought of Adrian and Sebastian weighs on my mind. I know that I must make a choice…I just don't know which one to choose.