Sweet Hatred-Chapter 472: Words

SARAH

Watching Aria cry did something to me.

Not the neat kind of crying. Not tears sliding quietly down a composed face. This was raw. Her shoulders jerked. Breath kept catching, like her lungs forgot the rules.

Sound escaped her in broken pieces, small and humiliating, and I stood there with my hands useless at my sides while something inside my chest twisted the wrong way.

It was not triumph.

It was not relief.

If it was guilt, it came tangled with grief, regret, envy, longing, and a dozen other feelings that refused clean names. They stacked on top of each other until I could barely tell where one ended and the next began.

She looked wrecked.

Smaller than I remembered. Folded in on herself. Nothing like the woman who had walked into Kael’s office a lifetime ago with her spine straight and her smile easy, confident in a way that made rooms tilt toward her without her even trying.

I had done this.

I had taken that woman and brought her here. Concrete. Cold light. Restraints biting into her wrists and ankles. Fear written into every shaking breath.

The thought should have fed something ugly and hungry in me. Should have made me feel in control.

Instead, it left a hollow behind my ribs, like something essential had been scooped out and discarded.

"What if you’d seen me?"

The question slipped out before I could stop it. My voice sounded wrong in my own ears. Too sharp. Too thin.

"Really seen me. Not as your best friend. Not as the person who was always there. But as someone you could love. The way I loved you."

Her face folded in on itself. Whatever fragile composure she had left cracked.

"Sarah."

"What if Kael never walked into that office?" I kept going, words tumbling now that the door was open. "What if he never existed at all. Would it have been different. Would you have eventually..."

"No."

One word. Quiet. Solid. It landed and stayed there.

"I did see you, Sarah," she said. Her voice wavered, but it held. "I saw my best friend. I saw someone I trusted more than anyone in the world."

"But not the way I needed you to see me."

"You wanted something I couldn’t give," she said. "That isn’t my fault. And it isn’t yours either. We don’t get to choose who we love or how it happens."

She paused, breathing uneven, eyes bright and miserable. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"But what you did after that. The lies. The manipulation. Sabotaging my relationship. That was a choice. You chose to hurt me. You chose to hurt Kael. You chose to burn everything we had."

Every time you talked about someone new, it killed me.

The sentence lived in my head for a beat before I forced it out loud. "Every single time. You would talk about dates, about crushes, new friends, about whoever you were with that week, and I had to sit there smiling, nodding, pretending I was fine while it ripped me apart."

"Then you should have told me."

"And lose you?" A laugh scraped its way out of my throat. Bitter. Broken. "Tell you the truth and watch you pull away. Watch you look at me like I was someone else. Watch our friendship die."

"So instead you let it rot."

The words hit harder than she raised her voice ever could have.

Because she was right.

"At least if I stayed quiet, I still had you," I said. "Even if it hurt. Even if every time I saw you get close with someone I wanted to disappear. You were still there."

"That isn’t love, Sarah," she said softly. "That’s self-destruction."

"What was I supposed to do?" My voice climbed despite myself. "Tell me. What would you have done if you were me."

"I would have been honest," she said. "Even if it hurt. Even if it meant losing you. That would have been better than this."

Her gaze drifted. The restraints. The bare walls. The concrete beneath her. The reality neither of us could escape.

"Anything would have been better than this."

Silence pressed in.

It felt heavy. Thick. Like the air itself was judging us.

"I would have done anything for you," I said at last.

Not an excuse. Not a plea.

Just truth.

"I know," she whispered. "And that’s what scares me."

Because love was not supposed to swallow you whole.

It was not supposed to hollow you out and leave nothing but need behind.

It was not supposed to turn into this.

Kidnapping. Violence. Ruin.

Somewhere along the way, admiration had curdled. Devotion had twisted. What I had dismissed years ago as confusion, as closeness, as dependency, rose up now undeniable and merciless.

Maybe I had been in love with her.

Not recently. Not gradually.

All along.

And rather than acknowledge it, I had buried it under loyalty and denial and the safety of being wanted without risk. I had told myself it was more complicated than it was. Easier than it was. Anything but this.

"We can’t go back," Aria said after a long moment.

"I don’t want to."

The words surprised both of us.

But they were real.

Going back meant pretending again. Swallowing the truth. Watching her with Kael and shrinking a little more every day.

At least now the lie was dead.

Even if everything else was ruined.

"Then what do you want?" she asked.

The question hovered between us.

What did I want.

A week ago, the answer would have been immediate. Her. Us. The impossible thing I had built entire fantasies around.

Now I looked at her like this. Bound. Frightened. Crying because of me.

Something inside me fractured completely.

This was not love.

This was possession. Obsession. Something sick that had worn love’s face for too long.

"I don’t know anymore," I said.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

Two people who had once been everything to each other, sitting in the wreckage of what remained.

On the surface, it almost felt normal. Like the conversations we used to have late at night. Honest. Quiet. Familiar.

Underneath it was unbearable.

She was still tied up.

Still my prisoner.

Still not safe.

And in six hours, maybe less, we would move again. Run again. From Kael. From consequences. From the ending waiting for us whether we liked it or not.

"I’m sorry," I said.

The words were small.

They did not fix anything.

But they were all I had left.