A Toxic Affair

By Casey Harvey

What happens when love turns toxic? Sam and Sandy had the best of starts. Most of their friends still think they’re perfect for each other. But behind the public façade lurks a skeleton in the closet: one of them is emotionally abusing the other, making their partner live in constant fear and guilt. Which one, and why does the other stay? Told from the author’s personal experience of a controlling relationship, ‘A Toxic Affair’ examines the ins and outs of emotional abuse and how something as innocent as young love can swiftly become something more sinister.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Casey Harvey
• Release date: Oct 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465965165

Casey Harvey

I am an accountant from Sheffield who likes to read in spare time.

Book preview

A Toxic Affair

By Casey Harvey

Copyright 2011 Casey Harvey

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

A Toxic Affair

Love comes, and love goes. But what if love stays longer than it ought? What if at the point when you should leave, you find yourself trapped, controlled, afraid of the partner you’re supposed to adore? This is a tale less of love gone wrong, and more of love gone on too long; of a boy, barely a man, who cannot leave; of a girl, barely a woman, who cannot help but control.

This is the story of Sam and Sandy: one, the controller; the other, the victim…

Day 100

He stood at the end of a corridor he had walked down a hundred times before. Her corridor. There she was, leaning against the door to her flat, waiting for him: the girl who had come to make his life hell, to make him a prisoner in his own mind. As much as he yearned to be free of her, he had never been able to bring himself to do it.

He could never have imagined in that moment that five days later, he would have his wish fulfilled.

Come on! she nagged from her doorway. She was giving him that look again: like he was a disobedient animal who needed discipline. Yet her eyes were more intense than he had ever seen them before. They tugged at his heart-strings and he could not help but move his feet.

His mind protested, of course. But since when had his mind been able to influence his body? Guilt drove his feet now, and he was powerless to shift it. Her daily invasion into his private life could not stop it. Her manipulative threats of violence could not stop it. Even her suicide attempt had not stopped it. Each time she chipped a little bit more of his soul away, his mind grew more agitated and his body more servile; each time he tried to protest, he became ever more her slave.

So he walked, and she smiled. She had snared her prey a long time ago and now he was irretrievably, completely hers. She had had him wrapped around her little finger since the day they first met.

He smiled back: a fake, outward smile, hiding the daily pain of his inner existence. He did not love her but he could not bring himself to say. And every time she told him and he lied back, a little more guilt was added to his already heavy load.

Like now, for instance.

I love you, she said, embracing him hard.

I love you too, he lied.

It was Wednesday: their pizza night. She led him into her