Haunt Me (Heartbreaker Duet #2)

forty-one

“Don’t do this, Eden.” I am shaking.

The world’s bottom is dropping out from underneath me and I’m falling and falling. And falling.

“Why are you here, Zay?” Eden asks me.

“Because I can’t breathe without you,” I reply.

She smiles, but it’s the wrong kind of smile.

“You flew here from Europe in the middle of work, a new release, a tour… It’s like you need to make up for lost time.”

“I do need to make up for a lot of things, I told you this.”

“It’s not your job, Isaiah. My life was stolen from me, but the responsibility of giving it back to me is not yours to shoulder, do you understand? I have to deal with that on my own.”

“What if I want to shoulder it?” I say quietly. I want to shout it.

I want to smash something. I want this whole day to stop, to get it started all over from the beginning. To make different choices, ones that would not lead us to this moment.

“No,” she says simply.

“So you are not ok with me trying to give you the world?” I ask her.

“Not as a means of making me better. Not if you… not if so much depends upon it.” She sighs. “I can’t do this.”

I freeze. My eyes are closed; I refuse to believe this is happening. It’s a dream—a nightmare. Kill me , I think. It will hurt less.

“I can’t do this, Isaiah,” she keeps repeating it. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t stand it.” She is fighting for breath. I take her arm to make her look at me; she doesn’t.

“What do you mean? You can’t be with me?”

“I can’t keep hurting you. The guilt is crushing me. The weight I’m putting on you. This needs to stop. I am going to lose my mind. Or you will.”

“I don’t mind losing my mind over you.” I mean it, too.

She laughs bitterly. “Don’t you see? You’ll let me do anything to you. That’s not right. It’s not fair.”

“It’s not fair what happened to you either, Eden!” I scream. Then I lower my voice. What is the point anyway? “I just… I just love you.”

She’s quiet for a bit, letting my words hang between us .

The unspoken words also hang between us: Is it enough? Is my loving her enough? Is it enough to save us both? What if it isn’t?

“It’s happening all over again,” Eden says quietly. “I’m breaking.”

“We’ll fight it together,” I say. “I’m right here. Look at me.”

“I can’t look at you, I’m too ashamed.”

“Not of me, you aren’t.” But she is; I can see she is. My breath hitches.

“What if they’re right, the doctors? What if I can’t love? What if he trained me to be too submissive, too… What if I don’t have enough of a mind of my own, enough of a heart of my own, to ever be brave enough to love you as you deserve?”

I close my hands around her arms and pull her closer to me.

“You are nothing but heart, Eden. You are the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

“I don’t see it,” she replies. “What if I can never see it? It’s not fair to you, to spend your life trying to put me back together. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…”

“I am not a horse, baby.” I try to joke, but inside I’m breaking. I’m crying and I don’t want to let her see.

Please laugh with me, Eden. Please come back to me, baby.

Suddenly, I remember pushing my hands against her chest that day she fainted in the woods, years ago. I remember pleading, begging her to come back to me. I remember fighting for her every breath.

Then I remember how I drove to get to her on that highway, how I violated every traffic rule that existed, and some that haven’t been invented yet, just to get to her. How demented I was, how desperate.

This is worse.

I feel even more scared now than I did both those times, but I won’t give up. I’ll fight like I fought then, and even harder.

“No,” she shakes her head. “You are the king.” My head snaps up. “You are the fairytale prince. You are everything, Isaiah. But even you might not be enough.”

“You know it’s not true. You know it.”

“I don’t know it.”

“You’re breaking me, Eden, no, please, please!” The words are wrenched out of me in a heart-wrenching scream that’s full of anguish. But all I get in response are her retreating footsteps.

“What if being with you takes me back?” she asks. “What if…”

If I try to speak, I will wail. Wail .

Her voice, toneless, defeated, takes me back to those woods, to the day she destroyed me. I am no longer here. In my head, I’m back in the forest, running after her, stumbling around trees blindly, catching myself against branches tangling up in my shoes, folding to my knees, knuckles bruised, bleeding. Losing her.

Inside my head, I’m screaming, like I did then: ‘Eden, no! What did I do? Talk to me. Eden, I’m begging you!’

But here, in this room, in reality, no sound comes out of my mouth. My feet don’t move an inch. There’s nowhere to run to. No more questions to be asked.

This is it. It’s over.

“I’m sorry,” Eden keeps saying. She’s crying. “I’m sorry I ruined everything again. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.”

I just can’t stand it anymore.

I walk out while she’s still saying ‘sorry’. I’m waiting for my mouth to say something, anything. It doesn’t.

I close the door behind me, fighting the urge to reduce it to splinters. To walk in and carry her in my arms away from the memories, away from the pain. I hear her break apart on the other side of the door, and I’m already texting Faith:

Call her.

I lean back against the room’s door, waiting for Eden’s crying to stop. I would never have left, not in a million years, not if wild horses were dragging me. But those words she said: ‘What if being with you takes me back?’ shattered me.

And with every passing second, I know it to my core that they’re true.

Being with her takes me back. I’m having constant flashbacks, I keep being dragged back to that place, those wounds, those woods… And if it’s happening to me, it’s happening to her as well. Has been all this time, since she met me on Spencer’s yacht.

What if me coming here was a mistake? What if just me being here is putting a pressure on her she can’t stand?

What if me being with her is making her worse instead of better?

What if I’m the source of all her new nightmares and the dark circles under her eyes? What if I’m the reason she can’t stop remembering?

I am, of course.

I can see it clearly now .

She is trapped in a vicious cycle of memories and flashbacks, because of me. I am a living, breathing memory of her childhood and adolescence. And that will never cease to be the case.

I hung my head. New York was a dream, after all.

Now, in the real world, all my presence is doing to Eden is taking her back to that monster’s house. Back into the abyss of her memories. She can’t handle this. Us. Not yet. Not ever. I wait for her sobs to subside a little, and then I hear her phone buzz through the door.

“Fee?” she says and her voice cracks.

Faith has called her. She’ll take over now.

The next second, I’m gone. I run down the hallway and out the main door. I texted my driver and he’s already waiting outside.

I break apart the second I’m in the car.

…

Everything is darkness.

I go through the motions of the next show, and the next, but I just can’t stand it. I can’t stand existing. It’s like I need to get out of my skin, but I have a performance every single night, and I have to keep going. I don’t know how.

How do I peel myself off the floor for the rest of the shows?

Not to mention, my new album is coming out in a week.

A week .

I have so much I need to do. Gritting my teeth won’t cut it. I know what I need: I need a pill.

Think. What do you really need?

I need her . I don’t have her—might never have her.

I need a pill.

I don’t end up taking it, but it doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like barely surviving, and I can’t keep doing that night after night. I can’t keep doing these shows, standing there, singing in front of thousands of people, with my heart ripped out of my chest, still bleeding profusely from the rib cage where it used to be.