4. Evie
Evie
NEW MESSAGE
…
How heartbreakingly lonely to realize you have no one to talk to.
“Pathetic,” I whisper to myself, renewed tears filling my eyes as I stare blankly at the new text message I was going to send to…no one.
I don’t know when it happened.
When I let myself disappear into nothing.
How I made Felicity and Carter my entire world.
How I gave them the power to break me so easily.
It’s not entirely their fault, but in this moment, it’s easy to hate them. It’s easy to forget that all those months ago when my memories began to trickle back in, I pulled away. Pulled away from my favorite things, favorite people…pulled away from living.
I’m a shell of who I am.
An utter shell.
Blinking away the tears, I lift my head in time to watch the elevator doors slide open. Matteo steps through, pulling behind him a suitcase that seems about to rip at the seams, but that’s not what has me gasping.
Flinging myself from the car, I rush for him. “Oh my fucking God, did you murder them?” I all but screech, horrified at the blood splattering his arms and chest.
Matteo’s firm yet gentle hand lands on my shoulder, steering me back toward the car. “I didn’t do anything that they didn’t deserve.”
His hand leaves my shoulder as he opens the trunk and places my suitcase inside, but I can’t take my eyes off it. I don’t let him wave my concerns off.
If he’s surprised by my strength, he doesn’t say anything.
Pulling his hand closer, I inspect it. “You’re so lucky it’s off-season. Jesus, Matteo, are you okay? Is it broken? It’s swelling quickly.”
He tries to remove his hand from my grasp, but I don’t let up.
“My hand’s fine. Get in the car,” he says gruffly.
“No.”
He arches a brow. “Now’s not the time to be stubborn.”
“Well apparently I need to grow a backbone because people continue to walk all over me!” I don’t realize I’m yelling until I’m done, my chest heaving.
The frown that creases his brow isn’t new—Matteo’s resting face is always a scowl—but this time it’s different. His eyes are quizzical, and I could swear he can see all the way down to my soul.
My bleeding, aching, battered, lifeless soul.
His tone is so soft, so gentle, I take a step away before I realize what I’m doing. “Please get in the car.”
Ignoring him, I lift my chin. “Did you at least leave him breathing?”
“Yes.” His eyes remain glued to mine as he all but pleads now, “Get in the car, Dove.”
Spinning on my heel, I slide into the passenger seat without a rebuttal. After knowing everyone is still breathing, I’m more than happy to get as far away from this fucking hell as I can.
Matteo wastes no time, jumping into the driver’s seat and turning on the ignition. He puts the car in reverse right as the elevator doors open and Felicity comes running out, drenched head to toe.
My lips twitch as I slide my gaze to the driver’s seat. “Felicity looks a tiny bit wet.”
Matteo grunts, his annoyance slipping away as we exit the garage, our timing impeccable as her hyena-like scream fills the garage. His tongue darts out to slide along his bottom lip before he shrugs innocently. “She seemed thirsty.”
A bubble of laughter rises in my chest only to get stuck halfway by the boulder of emotion lodged in my throat. The weight of the passing hours, the turmoil, and the adrenaline that coursed through me while destroying their cars leaves me the moment Matteo’s car hits the streets of Denver.
The crash happens instantaneously.
It feels as if I’m sinking in the ocean, weights tethered to my legs. I’m being dragged to the bottom, and no matter how hard I try to free myself from the heavy shackles, I continue to drown.
And I fear I no longer have the willpower to keep fighting to reach the surface.
The car ride to Matteo and Caleb’s apartment was so silent you could hear if a pin dropped.
My silence was due to the adrenaline crash, one so strong I struggled to keep my eyes open. Matteo, on the other hand, was white-knuckling the steering wheel the entire drive to the point I think he was restraining himself from turning the car around and going for round two.
I didn’t even bother asking what happened in my old apartment.
No matter how hard I push for answers, he won’t tell me.
Matteo has always been a silent fixer. Once when I was fourteen, I accidentally knocked my favorite mug off the counter, smashing it to smithereens.
It was an emotional support mug at the time, even though I can look back and admit I was crying a little too much over a mug.
Despite that, the next morning, I opened the cupboard to find it sitting on the shelf, glued back together. No one owned up to fixing it, but I saw the way Matteo was watching me, as if he was savoring the smile that overcame my face.
But this is no broken mug. This is my life, and Matteo can’t fix why my heart is shattered.
At the very least, finding your boyfriend sleeping with your best friend is a great cover-up as to why you’re truly depressed. People will stop asking questions now that I have an excuse.
Unlocking his apartment door, Matteo lets me walk in first, trailing behind me with the suitcase I tried to grab only to have my hand swatted at. He’s like a damn cat with his reflexes.
I stop in the open kitchen and living area, swinging my head to the right, to the stairs that lead up to the bedrooms, then to the left, where a hallway leads to a bathroom and laundry.
Matteo’s quiet as he passes me, taking my suitcase upstairs to the guest bedroom that sits between Caleb and Matteo’s rooms. Following behind him, my lips twitch, a smile threatening to bloom for the first time since…
forever. Matteo is wholly unaware how much space he takes up, his broad shoulders filling the doorway of the guest bedroom, his head having to tilt to the left slightly so he doesn’t knock it against the frame.
He wheels the suitcase into the room before stepping back into the hallway and opening up a cupboard behind me, pulling out blankets and pillows.
I should move to help him, not that he would let me anyways, but I should do something.
And yet I can’t.
I feel stuck.
Stuck in life, stuck emotionally, stuck mentally.
I don’t know what to do with myself.
The sudden urge to go home hits me, the deep-bone yearning suffocating me until my throat burns and the back of my eyelids sting. The feeling’s uncomfortable because I don’t have a home. It doesn’t exist.
It’s not my old apartment.
It’s certainly not my childhood home.
And it isn’t this apartment.
I don’t have a home to escape to.
Matteo steps in front of me suddenly. I look up at him, the tears making him blurry again, but I can guess that he’s frowning.
“What do you need, Dove?”
That was the wrong question to ask.
It’s like when you’re on the cusp of crying, using sheer willpower to stop the tears from falling, and all it takes is one crumbling domino, one simple Are you okay?, and you’re tumbling.
My bottom lip wobbles, my chest rising on a sharp inhale.
“I want to go home,” I whisper, all but choking on the next words. “But I don’t have one.”
“Oh, Evie.”
Matteo’s softness is my undoing.
My knees buckle, my shoulders shaking as I’m consumed with grief. Grief for the childhood I’ve been mourning, the best friend I thought I had, the utterly shitty ex-boyfriend, and the apartment that I tried to pour love into.
I grieve my old life because there is not a shred of anything for me to return to.
Matteo catches me, his rough calloused hands clasping my arms gently. Shame should course through me, mortification that he is seeing me at a point so low in my life that I can’t find my way back out of the hole I’ve been shoved into, but I don’t have the energy for it.
I have nothing left.
And I’m terrified that I can’t get through this pain.
Through the ugly tears and the horrifying sound escaping me, Matteo scoops me into his arms before setting me down on the bed. He lays a blanket over me, his hand hovering above my body, his movement hesitant, until a sob wracks my body and his hand comes down, stroking my hair.
It’s the first touch in months that hasn’t made me flinch.
“I’m here, Dove. I’m here,” his gruff voice whispers.
But I’m not.
And I don’t know how to explain to him that I lost myself months ago, that what’s happening is more than just the betrayal of what I discovered today.
Evie Ellington died eleven months ago, and I haven’t been able to revive her.
Carter and Felicity just put the final nail in my coffin.
Attempting to rub the sleep from my eyes, but I fear I’ve cried to the point my eyes have swelled shut. Is that even possible? Slowly sitting up in bed, I keep rubbing until I’m able to pry my heavy lids open.
It takes an ungodly amount of time to realize that…
I’m not in my home—the sudden reminder that I don’t have one has my stomach freefalling
I cried myself to sleep
I’m no longer upstairs in the bed where I fell asleep but on the couch in the living room
Turning to the side, I find a glass of water Matteo left for me on the coffee table and thank him mentally for it because my throat is painfully raw from all the screaming.
I keep looking around the darkened apartment, the only light emanating from the TV, the volume on low, acting as background noise.
I try to figure out what woke me when I suddenly hear it—a faint drill sound from upstairs.
Trailing upstairs, I round the corner, only to stop in my tracks. At first, I think I’m still sleeping, that I must be dreaming or my eyes are deceiving me. I blink a few times to rule out the latter, but the sight before me doesn’t change.
Matteo whips his head my way, his back straightening as that infamous internal wall of his slams up.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Ignoring that, I gesture around the room I originally fell asleep in. He must have moved me at some point. “What is all of this?”