It was interesting how she had no interest in any of his stories, not his books. She wanted to know what he was saying, his deepest thoughts, whatever she could use against him, but she eschewed his stories, which contained his life in metaphor, conjured into grand allegories. That's why horror was his trade. If she had looked hard there, she may have found her likeness, or, as she was prone, forced it into where it did not exist. But she did not read anymore. The written world held no magic for her any longer, as she'd given up the lettered world of fantasy she had so loved for the mundanities she tried to make into fantasies in real life ... and was disappointed again and again. Reading wasn't "cool" in the world she was handed, the world in which she chose to stay unfulfilled, unless it were useless self-help drivel. Maybe she was just so belligerent that she felt reading his stories was, somehow, giving into him. But she'd given into him more times than she realized and for quite a long time. Yet she never asked herself why. She was two people: the one who hated him and the one who needed him, locked in battle, stuck in inertia.   

That's what happens when one lets other people dictate one's reality. One loses out on what the heart wants, letting the mind, influenced by people who had no way to understand, chase it away.     

As bad as things had turned, for no real, discernable reason, she completely missed that he had given her an epic fantasy, one she made unnecessarily dark but one she refused to relinquish, and one that could have had the happiest of ever afters if she had been emotionally stable, able to see the absurdity of it all and appreciate the passion behind it. But she wanted doldrums ... stuff .... someone her friends would gush over, no matter how lame and phony, and no matter how much she really didn't. She chose boring, cliche, and no amount of money would make that life any less so.