Novel & Cerita It's Tearing Me Apart

My shaky hands grabbed a fistful of his shirt, stopping him mid-step. “Please… don’t go.” My voice cracked as I shook my head. “Stay with me. Please.” Tears brimmed hot in my eyes, and for a second I thought I could hold them back. I couldn’t. A sob ripped through me, breaking me wide open. I crumbled. My shoulders shook, my stomach clenched with every jagged breath. The tears I’d held back in public came crashing out now, no dam to stop them. It wasn’t just tonight. It wasn’t just Paul. It was everything—the anger, the disgust, the fear, the anxiety that had been chewing at me for months. He was just the final blow, the crack that sent me shattering.

Like being dead would be the only way to end the pain and suffering that I was experiencing right now. A tear slid down my cheek. Every day, it felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest, and somebody was beating it, like it was exploding. I took a deep breath in, as I shifted the boxes to the side, checking that the amount of product was right in each box.

My knees give way, but Sarah catches me quickly and eases me onto a bench. I settle down. Tears sting my eyes. “I-I almost destroyed everything. I almost—” “No.” Sarah says firmly, cutting through my panic. She cups my face, forcing me to meet her eyes. “You didn’t. You won in the end. You stopped that part of yourself. And you have me. I’m here. Remember we’re in this together.” The words break me. A sob tears out of me. Raw and ugly. “I can’t do this, Sarah,” I shake my head. “I can’t keep being torn apart like this.”

I muttered, biting back tears as I sat there helplessly, my chest rising and falling in shaky breaths, the sting in my waist refusing to ease. I let the frustration pour out in hot tears. “God… just when I thought I could start this day peaceful for once…” My voice cracked as I buried my face in my hands, crying quietly. “Ma?” Collin’s worried voice drifted through the door again. “Are you sure everything is okay? I can hear you crying in there.” I pressed my lips together, not wanting him to hear how broken I felt. Still, the truth slipped out in a trembling whisper, “I… I don’t know, Collin. I can’t… I can’t really stand.”

I doubled over in pain as the ma te bond itself was ripped apart, leaving behind a gaping, bleeding wound.

It could destroy my entire life. “I can’t tell them,” I said, shaking my head at my reflection. “But keeping this to myself is... it’s unbearable.” A sharp ache built in my chest as tears welled up in my eyes. “This is so messed up. It’s driving me crazy,” I whispered. Hot tears began to roll down my cheeks. I tried to stifle my sobs, pressing a hand over my mouth to keep the noise down. My shoulders shook as I let it out, unable to hold the pain inside any longer.

I tore her apart, shredded the trust she gave me and burned down everything we've built together. I sit in the wreckage of my office, phone still clutched in my hand. The silence presses in, broken only by the sound of my ragged breathing. Everything in this room is nothing but ruin, just like me. Losing Beatrice, it's a pain that burrows deep and eats me alive from the inside out.

“This is for letting him anywhere near you.” Tears are falling freely down my face and my bottom is sore and burning and something is cracking open inside my chest — some pressure I didn’t even know I was holding, loosening with every blow, releasing with every sharp sting of pain. I feel lighter and more wrecked at the same time and I don’t have a word for what that means.

If I leave, I destroy us. I chose the one that keeps you breathing. I closed the app without sending it. As the plane lifted off, the city shrank beneath clouds, buildings dissolving into abstraction, streets becoming lines, lives becoming dots. Something inside me fractured quietly. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just a clean, devastating break. I pressed my forehead to the cold window, tears sliding freely now, unchecked, soaking into my scarf. I didn’t wipe them away. I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t noble.

Too much everything. I screamed as it tore through me.