Chapter 72 - - 72 : How dare you make me feel this way
They were already a few weeks in on their arrangement, when Matthias finally saw Leyla through his car window.
For the past few weeks, he had gotten acquainted with the sight of her lethargic state, always so expressionless and forlorn whenever it was just the two of them in the annex.
Whenever she arrived, she would dutifully undress herself for him, and wait patiently until they began. She always looked too exhausted, but so afraid of him whenever he would approach her. But the woman he saw now was different.
Outside from the confines of his room, she looked livelier than she'd been. She dressed respectably, and had an amicable smile on her face as she walked with a group of women roughly among her age. Among them was the same woman she came with during their picnic in Arvis. Mrs. Grever, if he remembered correctly.
Matthias couldn't help but narrow his eyes at her as he observed them. She looked thinner than she had been, but she no longer wore that haunted expression. She didn't carry a sullen and gloomy air around her peers, but rather a warm and sunny disposition. He could almost mistake her for a different woman.
He found himself torn whether he should rejoice she wasn't acting so helplessly outside of their meetings, or insulted by how well she was hiding their affair. Nonetheless, Matthias could respect her boundaries. If she wants to act like his mistress, he'll let her. Same as if she wanted to act as though she's a commonplace whore, he'd treat her as such too.
She has no one to blame for it but herself.
But despite that fact, he couldn't help but feel more affected whenever he would be forced to be rougher than usual with her. She took every insult, and every hurt he made her feel when they'd be together quietly and resolutely indifferent. And it made him feel strange whenever the night would be over, and he'd be left alone to his thoughts.
Lately, he found himself at a loss on how to deal with her. Matthias still felt the deep satisfaction of seeing her wince in pain and flush in embarrassment, that much hadn't changed between them. In fact, it gave him a sense of pride that she wasn't entirely indifferent to him.
What left him baffled was that whenever she would be on the verge of breaking down, as he'd learned to read by the way her lips quivered and eyes began to water, she'd take a deep breath, and no tears would come. It was as though she finally learned to calm herself down, cutting short the amusement she usually brought to him, leaving him with a bereft feeling.
The audacity she has on making him feel so terrible. It brought him back to the time when he'd nearly gone on a berserk streak, during spring last year. It was the first moment in his life he really felt that strong urge to kill. And that happened when he heard from his mother's lips that Leyla, his Leyla, was planning on tying the knot with Kyle Etman.