No Love For The Villain - Chapter 23
The loneliness that had become a punishment was suffocating. The fear of being left alone washed over her more fiercely than the terror of death.
“I was wrong…”
Her fingernails wore down as she scraped at the door. The tips of her fingers stung, then soon she couldn’t even feel the pain.
Someone, please get me out of here.
Pastor, Father, Heavenly Father…
“I was wrong…”
While muttering “I was wrong” incessantly, she sometimes felt the delusion that someone was listening. The illusion that she wasn’t alone would linger briefly, then quickly depart.
No one was listening, and nothing happened.
Trapped in the chilly bathroom, her hands and feet began to grow cold. Then, paradoxically, her body grew hot. As if resisting the cold in a desperate struggle to live, her body felt like it was burning.
Suddenly, the man surfaced in her mind, where all thought had ceased.
The hand gripping her ankle, the man putting her shoe back on.
The music named ‘freedom’ playing in his car, the scenery rushing by as they sped along.
‘Shall I open the window for you?’ His asking voice, their meeting gaze…
The words begging for forgiveness stopped. Instead, Sierra recalled, and recalled again, the moments that would never return. His voice, the voice calling, ‘Sierra.’
‘You have to breathe.’
His voice remained in her memory, more tender than it truly was, circling in her ears. As his face blurred hazily in her feverish mind, Sierra softly muttered a word she hadn’t been able to say before.
“Don’t go.”
The belated words scattered like white breath. Sierra curled into a small ball. In the endless darkness, the sound of a doorbell ringing echoed distantly.
Late in the evening, a visitor had arrived. The voice of Mrs. Miles shouting, “Just a moment!” woke her fading consciousness.
It was chaotic outside the door. The Pastor was yelling, and Mrs. Miles was screaming.
“Dear, call the police!”
Amid the commotion, the sound of approaching footsteps was distinct. The footsteps stopped in front of the bathroom door.
The door opened.
Light streamed in through the crack. The light pouring onto her eyes, weary from the darkness, was painfully bright, making Sierra wince and furrow her brow. She lifted her head, which had become stiff and rigid.
The face she had drawn all night, the figure that had wandered through her frozen mind, was right before her eyes.
He had returned.
“Eli…”
The name, reminiscent of the sensation of that violating, wicked kiss, tangled on her tongue. In the void left by the calls to ‘Our Father who art in heaven,’ only the man’s name now remained.
Sierra could only look up at the man who had come, defying her plea. Then, Eli lowered himself and reached out a hand. The cool touch of his leather glove met her feverish cheek.
Sierra let out the hot breath she had been holding back, like a child who only cries foolishly in front of their parents. Her body, quicker than her reason, had found someone who would recognize her fever and poured out the suppressed heat.
“Why… did you come?” Her words were mixed with feverish breath.
Eli slid his arms under her knees and around her back, lifting her up.
“I came because I missed you. Is that not allowed?” His voice, low and calm, wrapped around her ear. Its tone was a stark contrast to the whirlwind he stirred in her heart.
He shouldn’t have come. He should have let her confirm once more that the things you wait for never arrive, and be disappointed again this time.
But because he came, she wouldn’t be able to break her bad habit. She would never forget the memory of his single return and would wait for him again.
That’s why he was so terribly cruel.
Her mind, engulfed in heat, was hazy, and her vision blurred. Only the places where the man, who had crossed the winter streets, touched her coldly felt vividly sharp.
The stiff texture of his shirt collar rubbing against her cheek, the softness of his tie brushing her neck—in a world where all forms had melted away in the heat, only the sensation of him remained.
The house, swept through by the uninvited guest, was shrouded in silence.
The door, left unclosed, gaped wide open, letting the winter wind into the house. Mrs. Miles’s dazed gaze remained fixed on the doorway. The chilling sensation from the moment the ghost-like man stood at the door in the dead of night hadn’t faded.
‘Is Miss Knightley inside?’
He had asked for Sierra with a cold face. It wasn’t the face of someone coming to see a lover. If she hadn’t seen the man with the fierce eyes putting Sierra into his car, Mrs. Miles would have thought he had come to harm her.
But she had seen clearly what was in his hand.
A gift box with a fluttering ribbon.
Had he come to give her a gift?
Startled by the unexpected visitor, Mrs. Miles had stood frozen like a stone. When she met his watching gaze, a chill ran down her spine.
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