My love is your
disease...

I won't let it set you
free
*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐇 𝐁𝐄𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐄

"FUCK YOU, RANSOM!"

Anger. It churned within, hungry for destruction, and Katerina knew it was too much for her to handle. The pressure of the raging sea of anger would force her to say things she would not usually, or to express thoughts she had suppressed for weeks.

"Katerina don't fucking walk away when I'm talking." Ransom spoke following her down the stairs to the kitchen, watching as she lifted her coat and tried to escape. However, his hold on her elbow prevented her from going anywhere.

As she turned the anger from her eyes showed the scared child within, the girl who was taught to fight and starved of the love she craved. Ransom could see the pain beneath it and her soul drowning in this persona she'd carved to fit a world of indifference.

She took a step towards him, a vein almost popping in her temple and her fists tightly clenched. "Just tell me, is it true?"

He dropped his gaze to the floor and hooked his thumbs into his trousers.

"Of course not." The words he spoke in such well intentioned purity triggered something in her that came from fear.

Words left her. She stared into those bright blue eyes burning with anger, and her heart fell silent.

"Then why would she fucking say that you both fucked." Her gaze remained on Ransoms face, still smoldering underneath his stony expression.

She lowered her head for a moment as the silence engulfed them, before she finally looked at him again.

"You have a tell." She whispered, while her tears fell. Salty drops falling from her chin, drenching her shirt.

"When you lie, you have a tell. Please, don't try to make a fool out of me, just tell me." She knew instantly from the look in his eyes that they'd hit their mark. In that instant their relationship shattered into glassy shards. Nothing would ever be the same again.

"Alright." He began. "Alright. I had sex with her. Once, but that was it."

The heartbreak felt cold. It felt like concrete drying in her chest. The heartbreak was unexpected, as they always are - top of the world one minute and cut down the next.

"Look, it meant nothing-"

"God! That almost makes it worse!" She cried. "Does it ever mean anything to you?"

"You got down on one knee and gave me a ring... Did that mean anything?" She dared ask.

Ransom looked at her incredulously. "You know it did."

"Really?" She huffed a forced and bitter laugh. "Because after finding out you had sex with another women makes me think, Ransom, that it didn't mean shit to you!"

"I'm sorry, but I can't keep doing this. I don't deserve this."

"No. No, okay. I swear to God, I'll never hurt you again, just don't go. I love you." Ransom kept his eyes steady, resting on her face like they were home, but just briefly, the sorrow already building.

Katerina stayed rooted to the spot, the breeze creeping through the window moving her hair softly away from the cheekbones that had become so much more prominent over the previous weeks. Her features buckled just slightly before she spoke, the only betrayal of her grief.

"You say that like it means anything. What is love to you? There was a time I would have done anything for you. Yet you gave me up as soon as there was a chance to fuck some blonde at a bar. That isn't love, or at least not a version of it I can respect."

Katerina's face was paler than he ever recalled it being, as if her very blood was shrinking away from his presence, her lips almost ghostly despite the warm light. "Look, I'm a good enough person to forgive you, but not stupid enough to take you back."

Ransom broke his gaze, preferring instead to rest his eyes on the kitchen table.

Then he turned back to her, face set like an adversary, eyes cold, muscles tense. Katerina broke a little more inside - the pieces becoming shards. For in that moment she'd seen his inner monster lock onto her, and she knew love to him was a kind of possession. No possession, no love.

"Well if you want to go, there's the door."

And although Ransom told her to leave. He would never entirely let her walk away from him, he wanted her. And Ransom Drysdale always got what he wanted.

No matter who got in his way.