Suffering By Choice

Brennan

I cursed under my breath when I turned on my computer to pull up Leah’s room so I could fall asleep to her even breathing like I had been doing for the last week. It had killed me everyday to watch Armadillo curl up with her with his arms around her. It pissed me off and I wanted nothing more than to storm over to her house and beat his face in for touching my woman, but I couldn’t. I had to protect her by staying away. I wasn’t good for her. Not in the state I was in. Not like Armadillo was for her. He was in a good place. He knew who he was, and he didn’t have the same issues I did when it came to loving Leah.

He was so open about his adoration of her while I hesitated. He wasn’t worried about losing if he said he cared about her, which was obvious with the amount of times I heard him tell her while she slept. Sometimes at night, he spoke to me, like he knew I was listening, as if I didn’t have anything else to do with my time. I sighed as I leaned back in my chair. I really didn’t but I wasn’t going to admit it to him.

Everyday that Leah showed up for her VR sessions, I couldn’t help but be relieved. She wasn’t giving up on her program, which meant she was really trying, no matter how hard it got. And it had gotten hard. I put her through the same scene for four days with the same result of her panicking before her anger took over on the fifth. She had been so fierce and strong that it was still turning me on three days later. After that, she fought back every time Will showed up in her sessions.

She’d tell him how much of an asshole he was and how much she regretted marrying him. She told him that he may have broken her down but she was going to build herself back up with the help of an amazing man. Every time I heard her say that, jealousy flared back up. I knew she was talking about Armadillo and it killed me every time. It didn’t matter how many times I heard her tell him that she was afraid to be alone after her sessions and that was why she had asked him to stay with her, I couldn’t quite stop the jealousy.

I loved her. I said it in the mirror every day now. Sometimes, even two or three times. I just wished I had the courage to tell her to her face. If I could, then she wouldn’t be in his arms. She would be in mine. Or at least that was what I told myself to make it easier to watch her fall in love with someone else.

I slammed my computer shut angrily. I hated it. I wanted her so bad that it hurt. I missed her touch. I missed holding her. I missed her. I knew I saw her everyday but it wasn’t the same as having her next to me. Every smile she gave to him, every little giggle she uttered, and every time her hand clung to his, I missed her even more. She was my heart. And I really needed to find something else to do with my free time other than pine for her.

I grabbed the small safe out of my desk drawer before opening my computer, immediately being grateful that my screen wasn’t cracked. I opened the safe, eyeing the multitude of flash drives inside. I ruffled through them before pulling one out that had been carefully labeled “Wedding.” I put it to the side before grabbing one that said “First Anniversary.” I turned it over in my hands, hesitating for a moment before putting it into the drive port on my laptop.

I slowly went through it, smiling softly as I watched how I held Diadra, loving her with everything in me. When I was finished watching our dance at the anniversary party, I backed out of the file to the drives menu where all of the files were listed. I clicked on one, holding it until it was highlighted with a check mark in the box that appeared next to it, telling me that it was successfully chosen. I quickly clicked the rest of the boxes next to the other files in the drive before sitting back in my chair, staring at them. Did I really want to do this? Was I really about to start deleting all of my memories of Diadra? For Leah, who would probably be so deeply in love with Armadillo that she would never look twice at me again?

I sighed as I hesitantly pressed the delete button before watching all of the files slowly delete one by one. My heart started to beat rapidly as the urge to cancel the deletion almost made me stop it. When all of the files were deleted, I swallowed hard as my eyes closed. God, that was fucking hard. And now they were gone. I would never be able to get them back. I would never be able to see how she looked at me so clearly again. I only had my memories and with the amount of time that had passed since our first anniversary, the memories in my head had been fuzzy for years already. But yet, the crushing agony that I thought I would feel from deleting the files never came. I was sad, yes, but I wasn’t crushed. It hurt to watch the videos, but I wasn’t a blubbering mess of a man that couldn’t function. I took a deep breath, licked my lips, and put another drive into the computer.

Over the next several hours, I cleared all of the drives, only saving the videos that had my girls in them. Those hurt too much to delete so I didn’t. Losing them hit me in a different way than losing their mother, and I wasn’t ready to let go of the clear memories of them that videos offered. I saved the videos I wanted to keep to my computer before clearing the drive completely. Once cleared, I removed the labels before putting them in a drawer for later use for Eden. After I had cleared all of the drives, I resaved the videos of my girls on the last drive, labeling it My Triplet Daughters. Just in case.

I wasn’t sure why, but– yes, I did. I knew. If by some miracle, Leah and I got back together, and she went exploring again, I didn’t want her to leave me again if she saw a drive. I didn’t want her to think it was something that it wasn’t. Not again. I cursed as my eyes landed on the file on my desktop computer where the recording I listened to every night. Come to think of it, I couldn’t even remember when the last time I listened to it was. I tapped my fingers on the top of my desk. Well shit, I guess loving Leah was doing more good than I had realized, which only meant one thing. She had more power than even Diadra did to break me. And I didn’t think that if she did, I would ever recover.

I got to my feet, stretching as my alarm started to go off. It was about time to change up my tactics. I had been lying to her about not breaking the rules for her anymore. But I was starting to think that maybe now would be the perfect time to do just that.