Chapter 44 Hope
HOPE
In the middle of the night, I hear the creak of the floorboards outside my door and my body tightens. I sit up in fear that he’s back.
The door opens, and Heath stands there, my mother just behind him. She whispers something to him before quietly leaving us alone.
He steps into the room and sits on my bed without a word.
We just stare at each other, the silence thick between us, neither of us breaking it.
My chest feels heavy as my heart yearns to reach for him.
Tears fill my eyes and a few slip down my cheeks.
“Someone once told me, ‘You don’t ask for a hug. You just take it.’”
That’s all it takes for me to leap into his arms, the dam finally breaking as I cry my heart out in his chest. Sobs wrack through me and I shake so hard that he has to hold me tight to contain me.
“Shh… it’s okay. Your mom told me everything.”
“Heath, I — ”
“You didn’t kill him.”
“But — ”
“You didn’t, Rose,” he tells me in a hard tone.
The words don’t land but they linger somewhere in me. Maybe someday I’d believe them, but tonight the guilt is too much.
“I’ve got you,” he says softly.
We spend the rest of the night like that. He holds me, and I cry into him, letting the weight of everything spill out. At one point I tell him what happened and he listens to me.
I know something inside me is broken forever, a fracture that can never be mended. But I know love will heal me.