Chapter 51
Fifty-One
Jaclyn
One Year Later
My stomach growls but I can’t eat food.
I feel so empty inside, like everything has been taken away from me.
Even though they cut me open and buried themselves inside me deeply, I still think it was all a dream. But as I pinch myself while watching Hayden run around the kitchen to get me food and a first aid kit, I know this is real.
The nightmare happened.
The black hooded guy became real and I’m left in pieces.
Now all I feel is dread for what I’m about to do but I need to leave.
I need to run.
“How many days has it been?” I ask Hayden.
“A couple. You’ve been gone since Monday.”
It’s Friday.
Calvin is on a work trip. He’s coming back on Sunday.
What the hell am I going to say to him?
How to explain to him that my entire world fell apart and left me utterly broken and empty?
I can’t cry because all the tears were wasted on that first day. They were wasted when Eric came in and ruined me, multiple times.
And they did all that because of Hayden.
All for some silly little fighter and his silly little girlfriend.
“Jaclyn.” I look up at Hayden and see him holding a container of plain pasta in his hand. I don’t want to eat. I can’t. I feel like I’m going to throw up again. I shake my head and look down at my hands. Hayden’s hand grabs the side of my face and I can’t help but feel disgusting being touched by him. I move my face out of his hand and refuse to look at him. “Talk to me, Jaclyn. You have to tell me what’s going through your head.”
I shake my head and one single tear starts forming in my eyes. “I can't.”
I can’t look at him.
I just want the world to swallow me up and take me away. I just want it all to stop hurting. I hate feeling empty, like everything inside me is hollow.
“What is it? Talk to me. You can tell me anything.” Hayden still holds onto my cheek, trying to get me to look at him.
I shake my head lightly and push Hayden away from me. I get down from the counter and back up from him. There is still blood on my shirt and I hate how Hayden’s eyes go to the red stain, a vein in his forehead becoming prominent.
“I love you, Hayden.” One year ago I said those words for the first time but it didn’t hurt this much to say them to Hayden. I hate saying these words, it all feels wrong. Everything around me feels wrong. “I love you so much that it hurts me. It kills me, Hayden.”
“I know, baby. I know, trust me I do.” Hayden walks closer to me but I back away, almost as if I’m scared. But how could I ever be scared of Hayden? “Whatever happened in there, we’ll fix it together. No one will touch you anymore, I promise.”
“You’ve been saying that for a year now Hayden. After all of the lying and all of the sneaking around with the fights, I still ended up getting hurt.”
“What are you trying to say? That this is all my fault?” Hayden asks, getting mad.
I notice by the way he’s clenching his fists.
“Hayden I promised you I would stay but it went too far. You have no clue how much they pushed my limits in that fucking room!”
Tears are finally falling from my eyes. I wrap my arms around myself, needing something to protect me like armor.
All of my armor is gone and on that fucking concrete floor.
“What are you trying to say?”
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” I mumble and Hayden’s eyes turn cold.
He nods his head lightly and runs his hand through his hair. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he mutters and just chuckles darkly before looking back at me. “So after everything we both have been through, you’re going to give up? You’re not going to fight for us?”
“I can’t fight anymore, Hayden. I don’t have anything left inside me, it’s all gone, stuck in that fucking room!”
“You promised,” Hayden says, and I can feel my heart cracking little by little.
I lick my bottom lip as tears fall from my eyes.
“I know, and it breaks my heart that I am breaking my promise to you, Hayden, but what do you expect me to do? You expect me to be okay because I got fucking kidnapped and destroyed?” I walk one step closer to him. “They took everything from me, Hayden. Everything you loved, all of that love I felt for you, they cut it out of me!” Hayden’s face looks so emotionless, like everything I’m saying to him is going in one ear and out the other. Like he doesn’t want to believe anything I’m saying is true. “I love you, Hayden. You are my everything but I can’t do this anymore. I can’t see anything other than Eric and Marco when I look at you. It hurts looking at you and being with you. Everything inside me feels hollow and empty like there’s nothing to save or look for. It’s all gone.”
“Just try.”
“I can’t,” I sob, tears running down my face.
I thought I couldn’t cry anymore but I guess that’s all I feel like doing now besides throwing up.
“Waste of a fucking year,” he mutters and turns around to bang his fist against the fridge. I flinch and move away from him. “Fucking fighting for someone who can’t fight a little more.”
“You can’t say that. I have been there every step of the way. When Eric was stalking us, when Marco was pushing your limits, when your family was degrading you, I was there! I was in that fucking room! Not you so you have no right to ever disregard my feelings or what I’m going through because you don’t fucking know!” I yell at Hayden while he stands there staring at me like I just smashed his world to pieces. “That girl you loved, she’s gone. She died in that room, Hayden.”
I’ve had many heartbreaks in my life that have felt like I could die from just that. How idiotic I was for thinking that was the worst. That was all before I let Hayden Night destroy me.
He destroyed me while loving me all at the same time.
Hayden doesn’t say anything, he just stands in the middle of the kitchen staring at me and the blood stain on my shirt. “You need to leave.”
“Did you ever truly love me?”
All I feel now is just a red hot fire inside me. I can’t help but feel enraged that he would even think that.
“I went through chaos for you, Hayden. I didn’t just fall in love with you Hayden, I fucking flew for you. I died for you in that room! Did you not understand a thing I said? Are you just trying to make yourself feel better that you weren’t there when I needed you the most?”
Hayden shakes his head lightly and he walks out of the kitchen past me to the foyer.
I love Hayden, always will. He made me feel alive and that little girl inside me who was traumatized from her father felt safe in Hayden’s embrace.
But the girl who went through what she went through in that room, who is going to save her?
Hayden turns around to look at me. A tear falls from his eye and I can’t help but let out a sob as I look at him.
“Please don’t make this harder. I just need to be alone for a while, Hayden. Trust me, it’s not you. It will never be you. I just can’t feel anything other than emptiness and numbness. ”
Hayden walks towards me slowly and he wraps his arms around me and rests his forehead on mine.
We stay like this for what seems like forever until he kisses my forehead. I feel his tear on my forehead and that just makes me cry harder.
“Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be here. I’ll be waiting for you,” he mumbles before letting go of me and leaving without looking back.
No ‘goodbye’, no ‘I love you’ or ‘I miss you’.
No words left between us.