to get blood from a stone

[ Joshua sees her walk in, and immediately his hand moves self-consciously to his wrist where the stolen power dampener resides as he can’t help but straighten in his seat. They will never be free of each other--they’ll always have this; this painful dance that pulls back scars and scabs with every step.

But the worst part, for him, and for her, is that he’s learned to love that pain. He’s come to crave it when the nights grow cold and his heart grows lonesome, because it’s familiar. With alarming frequency, he goes back to before: before he’d ruined himself for her; before he’d driven that wedge between the two of them; before he tried to replace Giselle with her; before he’d cornered her in the golden light of a chandelier and stolen an unwilling kiss from her lips; before he’d forced her to leave him with people that could only half-empathize with his past.

A knot forms in his throat, pleading to be numbed, drowned, with a drink more potent than the one that sits in front of him. ]