VINCENT.
Maria was so impossible to deal with.
The more I tried to make sense of her, the more I realized she never followed any pattern I could predict. It was frustrating in a way I couldn't properly explain, because no matter how much control I thought I had over myself, she always seemed to pull something different out of me.
I couldn't believe she had that much power over me.
Over the years, I had built myself into someone who was supposed to be immune to women—untouchable, unshaken and unmoved by emotional distractions.
That was the version of myself I had carefully constructed but the moment it came to Maria, everything I had built seemed to fail completely, wholefully and without exception.
And the worst part was that I couldn't even pretend otherwise. I just couldn't help it, as it simply was what it was.
That was also why I never wanted to hear her talk about dying.
The mere thought of it unsettled me in a way I refused to fully acknowledge.
