Chapter

"Rose!" he called after her but she didn't look back as she walked beneath the night sky, "Fuck!" he slammed his hand on the steering wheel as he got out and briskly chased after her.

"Rosette!" he yelled catching up to her near the living room sofas and grabbed her wrist, "Wait."

"You talk about being happy but I barely feel fine." She yanked her wrist from his grip.

"You don't feel fine here?!" he yelled back, his expression drained.

"No!!" she yelled again. She wanted to hurt him. She she was hurting him, "I feel.. I feel like I'm drowning slowly, my-my lungs are filling with water and my eyes are burning but I'm not dying!" she threw her hands up, heaving and panting, "I'm not fucking dying!!"

This was the first time he had heard her curse, "What more can I do for you!?" he raged.

"Let me go damn it!" her hands went to her aching head.

He clenched his jaw tightly and hissed through bared teeth, "Everything I've ever let go has claw marks on it."

Rosette did not understand his desperation to keep her. She wasn't a trophy or an asset after all. She was human. She had a heart that needed warmth and hands that had to be held. She was dissolving to dust with each passing day and this man was clueless about it.

"Then love me." Her voice broke as tears spilled out of her whiskey-colored eyes.

His eyebrows pinched together as he slightly shook his head at her words. He knew what she meant. This was cruel to him. A cruelty that he was unfamiliar with. A cruelty he wished to never be exposed to.

She scoffed bitterly at his expression, "You can't right? How can you possibly love me?"

He took a step towards her, "Rose I-"

"Don't!" she held out a hand, "Let me finish today."

Her hand clasped over her aching heart, swallowing hard at the bile that had risen in her throat.

"You keep asking me if I hate you?" her face the picture of agony, "It would have been so much easier if I did. But how could I hate you when moments with you felt like the purest definition of magic? How could I hate you when you started holding my broken pieces without even realizing?"

She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. She knew there was no going back from this point.

He let out a breath, "Rose, I cannot be loved. I am everything you will despise. Loving me is madness."

Rosette wrapped her arms around her shoulders protectively, "If love is madness I don't want to find sanity again... I–I have given myself up to you"

Right at that moment, he wanted to pour his heart out to her. He wanted to cry with her and hold her till both their tears dried away to form warm smiles but no.

He would never say the things that he wanted to tell her. He knew the damage it would do. He loved her more than his own loneliness and pain.

His hands struggled under his mind's control to not touch.

"I would give you back to you if I could." he said in a loud whisper.

Rosette's eyes tore themselves down with despair.

Caelum wanted nothing more than to kiss those tears away, but he stood his ground.

He was not sure if love was salve or just a deeper kind of wound. He did not think it mattered because most times when you love somebody, you should want them to be happy. Even if you wind up being left out.

Rosette took a step back and then another before turning her back to him and walking away to the bedroom. She went up the stairs and slammed the door shut before collapsing with her back resting against it, sobbing into her knees.

Caelum stood there in the silence. A single tear rolled down his cheek.

Since when did emptiness feel this heavy? He thought as he brushed a finger on his cheek to find the little drop. He quickly wiped his eyes and paced to the sofa to pour himself a glass of whiskey.

Gulping it down in one go, he poured another neat and sat back on the sofa, staring at the whiskey in his hand, his eyes were filling again.

How could doing something right feel this wrong? In cruelly shattering her glass heart, he had frozen his own. But who knew? Who knew why those tears found their way in this man's eyes?

Caelum gulped down his neat again as he closed his eyes and laid his head backwards.

Just then the door upstairs clicked open. Down came Rosette wearing her coat and shoes, ready to go out.

Caelum's anxiety reached its peak. He stood up, "Where are you-"

"I need some fresh air. I'm gonna go for a walk in the garden." She said, her eyes lowered to avoid his.

What could he possibly say? He just silently watched her leave through the main gate.

He smashed the glass on the floor and just moments later the vase on the tea table met the same fate.

He fell back on the sofa grabbing the bottle of whiskey and chugged it down like waterbefore Tossing the almost empty bottle on the ground.

A fussy image of Rosette formed at the back of his eyes. she was smiling. Smiling so brightly that even the sun would have gawked. The image blurred further as red dots appeared and slowly everything diffused with black as sleep and alcohol took over.

......

Caelum did not realize when he had fallen asleep but his eyes opened to the sound of the chiming of glass.

He groaned at his throbbing head, "Who is it?" he asked groaning.

No one replied. He grunted and sat up straight, "I asked who-"

His eyes widened at the scene in front of him.

Rosette was picking up the pieces of broken glass on the ground, "What do you think you are doing!?" he exclaimed.

He became absolutely sober as he got on his feet and almost ran to her.

"Cleaning." She replied in a small voice, without even looking up. Her fingers had red gashes where the glass had cut through her skin.

Caelum clenched his jaw at the bruises and pulled her up on her feet.

"It cut you." He said picking up her hands.

She met his eyes and curved her lips in a smile that didn't reach her eyes,

"It's because it doesn't know that you broke it not me."

He squinted, "what rubbish are-"

"Heal yourself Caelum," she said, "Heal yourself or you'll cut the one's who didn't break you."

Caelum's eyes blanked out. The words hit somewhere deep inside his sorrowful body.

Rosette pulled her hands away, going down to pick up the rest of the pieces.

He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her up again, "Come with me." He said dragging her out of the living room and up the stairs.

..........................................