Chapter 51 #2
A dry laugh fell from his lips and he glanced away briefly before his eyes fixed back on mine, a new fire burning in them.
His anger was like electricity in the air, and I hated that I needed to be so in tune with it, hated that this still felt like my responsibility, hated what he could do to me if he wanted.
“You. Didn’t. Look. Back,” he gritted out. “Do you know how that felt to me?”
“Do you know how that felt to me?” I fired back, louder. “Do you think that’s what I wanted to happen? Do you think that’s how I wanted us to end up? Do you really fucking think I didn’t try my hardest to make it any other way?”
“You didn’t! You could’ve spoken to me, explained your thoughts, given me literally any warning before ripping my entire fucking life away from me!”
“I couldn’t talk to you. I just couldn’t.”
“Why? I don’t understand. I’ve thought about this so many times in the past two decades, wondering why you couldn’t have given me a single conversation. A last moment with you. Something. You left, without another word. So many years, dropped just like that and never spoken about—”
“Enough.”
“But you just—”
“I said enough! Do you want an explanation or not?”
Mason quieted, pressing his lips together.
“I’m only going to say this once,” I warned, my fingers twitching unsteadily. Terror sunk its sharp teeth into the flesh of my throat, ripping through me.
His eyes stayed locked on mine.
“Our last night together,” I started. The kitchen seemed to fall away, until it was just me and Mason in an endless void of twisted pasts.
Until it was just me and the man who still held parts of my severed soul, staring at each other as deeply as we used to.
I couldn’t hide from him, and I didn’t try in this moment.
It was too late for that. “You don’t remember it.
I know you don’t, because you were too far gone for me to hold you.
I lost my grip and I couldn’t get it back, not even a little bit. ”
The color drained from his face.
His hands slowly fell to his sides.
Whatever anger had been keeping him upright vanished. He looked sick.
“It didn’t happen,” I continued, my hands shaking too badly to hide. “But it almost did. All because I was too scared to tell you I was struggling. Obviously, I wouldn’t want to talk about that.”
His mouth opened instinctively, but no sound emerged. Panic spread across his face as he realized his voice was gone, horror sinking into his expression as he understood I’d taken his voice, and he could no longer respond to me.
He couldn’t say anything at all.
I fucking need it like this.
“I knew I couldn’t stay with you anyway, but that was the final thing that pushed me to leave. I didn’t want to. But…now you understand.” The end of my response died away, the sounds becoming quiet on my tongue.
I couldn’t put the worst of it into words.
The weakness that’d entered my body on that night, the genuine panic and fear of him.
I didn’t blame him. He’d trusted me to be able to hold him, and it was my fault that I couldn’t.
I tried. I fucking tried, until I had nothing left, until all my strength had bled out of me into him.
Death by a thousand cuts.
It wasn’t his fault. I didn’t even know why I hadn’t wanted him to top me that night.
Too many bad thoughts. Not enough control.
I should’ve been honest with him, should’ve told him I wasn’t doing well and needed help, but I was too much of a fucking coward to do that, so it all caught up with me in a single night.
My white lies and my walls up as tall as I could put them, trapping me in a nightmare I couldn’t admit to him.
That was the night I wished I couldn’t remember.
The vulnerability I’d felt was enough to kill me, even in my memories.
The only person I’d ever let come that close to me, suddenly turning on me, hurting me, forcing me, unaware of what he was even doing.
Trying to do what’d been unwillingly done to me once before.
I’d been so addicted to the drug of him needing me that I let it get out of hand, let him push me to a place where I could no longer hold all of him, too ashamed to tell him I couldn’t do it anymore.
He was a storm I couldn’t bottle, and I’d known that from the start.
I’d just been hoping he’d prove me wrong at some point. Hoping I’d prove myself wrong.
I couldn’t ignore the way I made him worse.
I was the one who craved his reliance, who put far too much faith in my own abilities, foolishly believing that I might’ve been the one person in the universe capable of withstanding his darkness, his Thrausian strength, his brutal instability.
The only person capable of truly loving him the way he deserved.
None of those statements were true.
I wasn’t capable of withstanding him, and I wasn’t the only one who could love him.
Dakota loved him now.
And she did it so much better than I did.
She’d kept him alive her entire life without knowing.
I couldn’t do it the way she could.
His mouth opened and closed, his expression anguished, his throat bobbing when he swallowed. But all he could do was remain silent. His voice was still gripped hard in my shaking fist, and I wasn’t going to fucking give it back.
I didn’t want to hear whatever he had to say about this.
Didn’t want his apologies, his pity, his horror.
I already knew what he was thinking, knew how he saw me. He saw me scared, all my armor stripped off, the broken core exposed.
It was impossible enough to tell him this in terms as vague as I was. I couldn’t stand it if he had the ability to ask questions or make comments or even some noise of pity towards me. If he needed the truth, he could have it. But I wasn’t going to give him anything else from me.
He was the only person who knew what’d happened to me in Heaven. The only person with that kind of power over me.
And I’d just given him so much more of it.
“Leave,” I ordered, hating the unsteadiness of my voice. “I don’t want to ask twice. I’ll force you if I have to.”
His eyes were glossy with unshed tears. His throat worked around words he’d been robbed of. His shoulders were slumped, as if all the fight and anger had fallen out of him.
Finally, he took one hesitant step backward.
Then another, never taking his eyes off me. Another and another.
His hand brushed the doorknob on the front door, but he didn’t turn it immediately.
He lingered just long enough for every year between us to start to feel meaningless, for me to almost believe we could still undo this, for me to wonder if I could survive him knowing me again. Just long enough for hope to become cruel.
Then he left.
Just like I’d told him to.