Chapter 133
Damien
Play - All I want by Kodaline
Wishes
She's already sitting there when I get to the cliff.
For a second, I just watch her exist in that space.
The wind catches her long hair. Her hands are tucked into the sleeves of her sweater.
And she's looking at the ocean the way she always did, like it brought her some peace life never offered her. And suddenly I can breathe again.
“Found you,” I say.
“I was waiting for you.” She smiles without looking at me. “Sit with me.”
God. I forgot how much I missed her voice.
I sit beside her, close enough to feel her. I can see the scar under her eye so clearly. Blue ocean eyes, shining like the saddest stars. The one she hated, and the one I loved because it was hers. I stare at it for too long and she sees it.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
Weren’t you worth more than that, Mireya?
She laughs softly, and it hurts. It hurts so much I have to look away. Because I spent months trying to remember the sound of it. Months waking up terrified I was forgetting. Months tracing down whatever was left of us in an empty and vast place where her memories were as sharp as broken glass.
“I missed you,” I say, and the words come out smaller than I intended.
She doesn't answer right away. She looks…sad. Just like when I first saw her on the rooftop that day, crying and smoking with fear written all over her soft and bruised features.
You already wanted to leave then, didn’t you?
When she finally does, her voice is barely above the wind. “I know, I'm sorry.”
Please keep talking to me.
The ocean stretches endlessly below us, the sky is dark, moonlight softly grazing the water. Everything is beautiful in the cruelest possible way. But she… she is the most devastating scenery I’ve ever witnessed.
“I looked for you everywhere,” I admit.
She closes her eyes, shaking her head carefully, “Don't.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll never find what you're looking for.”
I laugh once, it comes out like a broken sound. “I need to, Mireya. I don't know what to do with all the love that still has your name on it."
Something flickers across her face. Guilt.
Grief. Love. Maybe all three. I don't know.
I just know I never want this moment to end, I want to sit beside her until the stars come out and take us both with them.
Where time becomes an option. I want tomorrow, I want next week, I want every stupid conversation we never got to have, I want the rest of our lives. I want to take her away from here.
I want her.
“You should've stayed,” I whisper.
She looks down, and for the first time, she seems impossibly far away. “I know.”
“No,” my voice cracks. “No, you don't.”
How does a soul explain its pain when grieving? Does any of this make sense?
Did it kill me too?
She doesn't argue and I turn toward her completely, “Do you have any idea what it was like?” The words are rushing out now. “Do you know what it did to me?”
Do you know seeing you again is losing you once more ?
Her eyes shine, and I hate that. I hate that she looks sad. I hate that she looks sorry. I hate that she looks like she's already saying goodbye when I haven’t even made her smile yet.
“Come back, please,” I begged as she looked at me with the softest eyes, “Just long enough for me to get used to losing you."
There’s no reply for a long moment.
I’m asking for a dream, for an illusion. All because of love. Because loving her felt like standing before a house still burning and begging desperately to be let inside. And she never did. Now I’m met with the ashes of it all. And I still love her.
“You know, I always thought about how strong a soul can be to heal from so much violence,” she says. “I wasn’t strong enough. Or I was, I don’t know. But you made me feel alive when all I wanted was to die.”
But it wasn’t enough.
“I thought if I loved you hard enough, you'd stay,” I replied, looking at her.
Not able to take my eyes off the future my soul longed for.
“I… I knew. I knew the moment I laid my eyes on you, that you would be the most beautiful tragedy of my life and I still fell in love with you. I still love you.”
Fear climbs into my throat. What a terrible feeling it is, to be standing in a room and realizing the person you love is already halfway out the door.
I reach for her hand pulling it to my lips, kissing the very skin I was meant to never be able to feel again. “Stay.”
She looks at our hands, at the warmth sipping through the touch, then back at me and she smiles. A small, heartbreaking smile. In a second she leans in, leaving the softest scar on my lips, the most deadliest poison of all. A kiss.
Her warmth leaves me a second later. “How is everyone doing?” She asks, dangling her feet like everything is still okay.
“Milo is with Edna. He doesn’t understand,” I start without really knowing how to explain everything that happened last month. I don’t remember being there. “Your dad…your dad followed you shortly after.”
Her lips tighten at that and a small smile appears again. Mireya, you were always such a good liar. “How is Hayzel?”
“She’s always with Milo and she wants to visit the world,” I reply, trying to stretch this moment endlessly.
“And you?”
Me?
I don’t know. I don’t feel anything. The void is there but it doesn't seem to be empty. It’s strange to have a filled void inside of you. Filled with someone’s voice, someone’s laugh, someone’s memories.
“I killed Porter after that night. Ethan too, and the monster. They can never reach you again,” I say softly. “I’m with you always, and I’m not there somehow.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers before a lonely tear falls down her face.
She’s already standing when I notice how close she is to the edge and the absence of her. The wind catches her hair and throws it across her face, and for a second I forget how to breathe.
“Hey,” I say, too fast.
She doesn’t move. She looks at me with so much pain.
“Hey,” I repeat, louder now, stepping forward. “Come back.” I cross the space between us without thinking. “Don’t,” I say immediately. “Please don’t.”
Her eyes soften a little, like she’s trying not to hurt me even now that my heart has been shredded to pieces. “You always sound so scared,” she says.
“Because you keep leaving,” I answer, meaner than I mean to, but she doesn’t look away.
Instead she just studies me, as if trying to memorize something she knows she won’t be allowed to keep. “Look at me,” she says softly.
“I am looking at you.”
“No,” she says, and her voice trembles slightly. “Really look at me.”
So I do.
And it’s immediate, this feeling that something is ending even though nothing has moved yet. “None of it was your fault,” she says. “not yours, not Milo’s, not Hayzel’s, not Edna’s. None of this was your fault.”
My stomach drops. “No,” I said instantly. “No, don’t—don’t say that.”
Please don’t go. Not yet.
“Not the bad days,” she continues anyway. “Not the silence. Not the things you couldn’t fix.” She smiles, throwing her hand up trying to reach the stars. “I love you, Damien. I love you so much, but I hate myself more.”
“Stop,” I whisper. “Mireya, please stop.” My hands are shaking now. “Please.”
But she doesn’t stop. “You gave me good memories, remember?”
“Then why does it feel like I failed you?”
That makes her flinch, and it destroys me more than if she hadn’t reacted at all.
“You didn’t,” she says.
“Then tell me what I was supposed to do,” I rushed out. “Tell me what I missed. Tell me how to make this hurt less. Tell me how to live in a world that doesn’t have you in it.”
She looks down for a moment, like the answer is somewhere on the ground and not in her. “I don’t know,” she whispers. “If I knew, I would’ve stayed and told you.”
I step closer again. “I don’t want you to go,” I say. “Just stay until sunrise. One more hour. Please. I’m so tired of missing you.”
Her breath catches slightly. “Damien.”
“I can’t do this again,” I admit. “Every time I close my eyes, you’re leaving. Don’t make me wake up like that again.”
She looks at me like she understands exactly what that costs me. “I can’t…”
“But I spent so long trying to find you,” I beg pathetically for her to understand me, to love me enough to change the ending. To stay with me. “If you go, there’s nowhere left for me to look, I wasn’t even done loving you. I–I don’t want only a memory of you. I want you.”
Something changes in her face then. Sorrowful sad eyes filled with peace.
“When do I get to stop missing you?” I ask, quieter now.
She answers almost immediately. “When you stop loving me.”
A broken laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “Never.”
Her smile returns, small and destroyed at the edges, feeling like apology and love and goodbye all at once. I reach for her hand, but I can’t touch it. It’s so far away yet so close.
“I want to hold you so badly, to hug you, to love you,” I say, and I don’t even realize I’m crying until I can’t see her properly anymore. “Please don’t go.”
She looks at my hand, then at me. “I’m right here,” she says.
“No,” I say immediately, shaking my head. “No. Not like this.”
She takes a step back, and then another. And I move forward at the same time, like I can still close it, like this is something I can still fix if I just reach far enough.
But she doesn’t stop.
She only looks at me like she already knows I won’t be able to follow her where she’s going. And her smile… her smile stays even as everything else about her starts to feel like it’s slipping away from the world.
She’s slipping away from my fingers again.
“Do you still have the star I left for you?” she asks.
“I do, I always have it with me.”
“Open it.”
I find the small star paper in the back pocket of my pants and do so.
912321 written in blood. Hers.
“I–” her words come out of her lips as tears follow each of her words. “I’m with you, always.” She takes the final step back, and I run to reach her, the star falling following her to the cruelest place in the universe, a place I can’t touch. And she mouths, “Never stop making wishes for me.”
I scream, so loud I can feel it in my chest, but she disappears in the vast ocean, and the star floats there. Everything turns blurry.
And then, I woke up with my cheek pressed against cold stone.
My arm is still outstretched, as if I was holding onto someone who stopped existing mid-grip. As if my hand is still reaching for someone who never reached back.
Cold hits me first, then silence, then the name under my face finally registers, and everything in me feels like acid.
Mireya Vitelli.
Not again. Please, not again.
“Damien, you slept here again,” I hear Hayzel’s voice coming through. She’s watching me, her eyes are red, filled with grief. She never stopped mourning her.
“I saw her again.”
She smiles and taps my shoulder softly as I stand up. “Milo is in the car waiting for you. He wants to get more shells to add to his collection before leaving the island.”
I nod, looking back once last time to the stone where the love of my life will forever rest and then I leave a new star there. One she never got to make. One without her blood staining it. 9-1-2-3-2-1
“I’m with you, and I’ll never stop making wishes.” I murmur one last time hoping that my love will find her wherever she’s hiding.
I start walking back to the car when I hear Hayzel crying, “I want my best friend back, Damien. I need her back.”
And I swallow grief before replying, “I need her back too.”
Mireya Vitelli.
The foundation of my own tragedy.
I will see you again, and in the meantime, I’ll search for you in every firefly and every star that crosses my road. Grieving you will be my last act of love.
My eyes stare at the sky she last saw. Blue and endless, stars that weren’t bright anymore.
“I’ll wait for you to haunt me in my dreams, little miss sad eyes,” I whisper hoping, it already reached her before I even thought of it.
I have a promise to fulfill, Milo will grow up away from this hell, and he’ll never have to question his happiness like you did, I promise.