All Chapters of Love Rotting Away: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

I sat on the edge of the bed, my clothes hastily thrown on. "Your body and mind can be separate. Why can't mine?"The room was a wreck, and the charged intimacy of what had just happened still lingered in the air.Caelum stood in the darkness, blood dripping from his fingers.Milo Chavez knelt at his feet, trembling."Get out," Caelum ordered through gritted teeth.Milo scrambled away on his hands and knees, leaving us alone.Caelum's expression went blank. He strode toward me, seized my arm, and dragged me into the bathroom."Don't touch me! Mmph!"He threw me into the bathtub. My clothes were already half undone, and he tore off the rest.He snatched up the showerhead and blasted me with ice-cold water. He pinned me down despite my struggles."Annie. Just this once." His voice was gentle, but his hands were anything but.His hand trembled as he viciously scrubbed at the kiss marks on my neck.Humiliation washed over me.I shoved him with all my strength, grabbed the meta

The crowd surged and shouted.Caelum's grip loosened for a moment, and the crowd swept us apart.My face drained of color. I curled up in a corner, cold sweat soaking my back. I pressed a hand to my chest and struggled to catch my breath. I was terrified of the dark.A spiteful laugh sounded above me, followed by a sharp blow to my head.It was Nancy. She struck me repeatedly with an ashtray.She seized my hair and yanked me up. "How dare you hit me?"She shoved handful after handful of ash into my mouth.I gagged. The pain in my head was relentless, and blood streamed into my eyes, stinging them and bringing fresh tears.The darkness pushed my terror beyond its limits. My voice cracked as I instinctively called out Caelum's name. "Caelum—"Another slap struck my face. "You're a pathetic coward who's afraid of the dark. Why didn't you just die with your mother back then?"I froze. My heart sank into an abyss, and a sharp, needling pain spread through my chest.For a moment,

Caelum refused to believe Nancy had hurt me and dismissed the whole incident."The production team invited me to appear on a variety show as Nancy's boyfriend. What do you think?" Caelum asked as he sat beside me, his tone deliberately casual.Another sharp pain tore through my stomach. I had no desire to speak to him. "Sounds great. No complaints from me."His hand froze halfway through turning a page.My continued indifference finally pushed his long-simmering frustration to the breaking point.He pinned me against the sofa, his eyes bloodshot with rage, and shouted as if he were on the verge of losing control, "Annette! Do you really not care at all? What the hell do you want from me? How long are you going to keep this up? Do you want me to beg for your forgiveness? Do you want me on my knees?"I lowered my eyes and swallowed back the blood that rose in my throat. "Isn't this exactly what you wanted from me?"Caelum ignored my attempts to struggle free. He tore open my cloth

Caelum, a workaholic who had never missed a day at the office, stopped going to work altogether and stayed by my side at the hospital around the clock.He remembered how much I used to love the vegetable soup he made. He carefully took it out of the insulated container and held it out to me. "Annie, please try some..."I didn't move, and I made no effort to hide the disgust on my face. "Can you just get out?"He swallowed hard and forced a smile, his voice even more pleading than before. "The doctor said you need to eat something. How about some soup? You used to love it, remember? Just a little, please..."I took the bowl and dumped the scalding soup straight over his head.The thick liquid streamed through his hair and soaked into his expensive coat. Wherever it touched his skin, angry red patches appeared almost instantly.His brow furrowed, and the veins on the back of his hand bulged, but he didn't pull away.When he spoke, his voice was as rough as gravel. "Annie, you can

I admitted it. What I felt for Caelum had never been healthy.In my short life, all the love I knew during my first 17 years came from two people: my mother and Caelum.After my mother died, Caelum was all I had left. I had loved him. I had hated him. And now, as my life drew to an end, he was still the only person I could think of.The year I turned 17, my mother died, and that bastard of a father threw me out of the house. Caelum took me in and gave me a place to stay at the Pemberton home. That was when he confessed his feelings for me.From that day forward, I created a Instagram account and began documenting our relationship And now, Caelum was reading it, one post at a time.…Today was the anniversary of my mother's death. Caelum skipped class to take me to visit her grave.A light rain began to fall. We took shelter beneath the eaves, but the wind kept blowing the rain toward us.He stepped in front of me to shield me from it.I asked him what he was doing.He said he w