Chapter 37 Annalise #2
“No.” He whips around, grabs his hair with both hands. His knees buckle slightly, and he presses against the side of the couch like the floor might give out under him. “I would never hurt you. Not on purpose. I swear to God—”
“But that doesn’t make it okay. That doesn’t mean I’m not scared sometimes.”
He turns slowly, eyes wild and bloodshot. “I’m not a monster.”
There’s no such thing, Annalise. Monsters aren’t real.
But they are.
And they aren’t always witches and warlocks with sharp teeth and pointy claws.
Sometimes we create our own.
My jaw trembles. “I can’t do this anymore, Alex. I can’t be this person.”
He stares at me, shell-shocked, stripped bare and hardly breathing. “So that’s it? You’re just…done?”
“I can’t keep living like this. I feel like I’m being torn in two. I’m evolving, and you’re—”
“You said we were forever. You promised.”
More guilt sears through me. “I know. And I meant it. God, I meant it with everything in me. But forever isn’t supposed to feel like a cage. I’m not nine anymore. And neither are you.”
His breathing turns shallow, uneven. “What about Thailand?”
He flinches as he says it, the memory now a wound.
I curl my hands, my fingers shaking.
“The lagoons, the monkeys, all that street food you wanted to try.” He pulls up from the couch and winds back toward me. “We had a plan. We can still go. Maybe if we got out of here, cleared our heads, we can find our way back to each other. We can fix what’s broken.”
I press a fist to my mouth, a sob caught in my throat. “A vacation isn’t going to change anything. It’s an escape, not a fix.”
“It is. It will be. I can fix this.” His desperation is raw now, his body moving without thought as he reaches me, hands gripping my shoulders. “I’ll book that therapy appointment if that’s what you want. I’ll make the call. Tomorrow morning.”
“It’s too late,” I murmur.
“No. It’s not. I can’t lose you.” His voice cracks, reality setting in.
He stumbles forward, hands sliding down my arms until he’s clutching at my wrists.
Then he sinks to the floor. His knees hit the carpet with a thud, his forehead pressing into my stomach.
“Please, Annalise. Please don’t do this to me.
I can’t breathe without you. I don’t exist without you. ”
Tears streak his face, wetting my shirt as he buries himself against me.
My resolve waffles.
Regret, sadness, conviction, and terror, all twisting into something that makes me paralyzed.
I don’t know what to feel, what to do.
His arms cinch tight around my waist like a vise. “You’re everything. My reason, my anchor. You’re all I have. You can’t take that away. Don’t punish me. Don’t leave me.”
I try to step back, but he clings harder, his nails digging into the fabric at my hips.
His voice is hoarse, guttural, like I’m tearing him apart. “I’ll do anything. I’ll give you space, I’ll go to therapy every damn day. You want a new life? I’ll build it for you. Just don’t walk away. Please. I know you still love me.”
My arms hang limp at my sides as I tremble in place. “I…I think I have to love myself more.”
It’s not a lie.
But it hurts like one.
His grip loosens, and after a long pause, he flops back on his heels, staring at me like I’m already gone.
Am I?
What if I’m making a mistake? Alex has been my whole life. My best friend. My first kiss. My almost forever. If I leave now, what does that make me? A coward? A traitor? A girl who wrecked everything over one kiss?
The guilt scrapes at my chest. I want to snatch everything back—the words said, the kiss stolen. Smooth it all over and promise him I’ll try harder. I want to fix it.
God, I always want to fix it.
“It’s me, isn’t it?” He swipes at his face. “You think I’m fucked-up. You think I’m broken.”
My gaze drops to my wrist. To the bruise.
He follows my eyes, as if he studies the evidence long enough, he can erase it. Rewrite the damage. Pretend it never happened.
But it did.
I have to remember that.
“I never said you were broken,” I reply softly.
Alex pulls to his feet, a single tear cutting down his cheek. “But you’re thinking it. You’re giving up on me because you think I’m unfixable.”
“That’s not—”
“Say it, Annalise. Just fucking admit it.”
“No, I…I have to go.” I press my hands to my chest, where my heart beats like a war drum behind bone. “I-I need space. Time to clear my head, to think. To…”
I take a step back.
I’m not sure what tomorrow holds; all I know is that I need to process this relationship, that kiss, my future.
Chase. Alex. Me.
Everything.
More tears pour out of me.
But before I turn away, I watch his face turn to stone. Eyes turn to sleet.
Words turn to bullets.
Alex sniffs. “You always said I changed after that accident.”
I stop in my tracks. My blood freezes.
I blink, watching as a dark mask slips into place.
“I let you think that. Let you believe it. But that’s not the truth,” he says. “The accident didn’t change me—you changed me. You broke me, Annalise.”
The air in my lungs seizes. For a heartbeat, I believe him. Because that’s what I’ve always done. Shouldered the blame. If I’d been better, calmer, more careful, maybe the accident wouldn’t have happened. Maybe he wouldn’t be so angry. Maybe he wouldn’t lash out.
Maybe we wouldn’t be here.
“You were so damn needy,” he continues, huffing out a mocking breath. “So clingy. So codependent. It wore me down. Turned me into this.”
Guilt rages up like a tidal wave, familiar and suffocating. I see every sacrifice he’s made for me, every night he pulled me out of my own darkness, every promise I whispered that I’d never leave. My heart claws at me to stay, to fix this, to prove him wrong by proving myself wrong.
His eyes harden, glassy with venom. “You’ll break him too, you know. You’ll turn him into someone he hates. And then he’ll hate you for it. Because that’s what you do. That’s who you are.” A vein throbs in his temple as he twists the dagger deep. “Just give it time.”
The words detonate inside me.
They linger.
Ring, hum, tumble around inside my head.
No.
No.
That’s not true.
For so long I’ve let him define me. What I am, what I’m worth, what damage I’m capable of. And I realize now…that was the point.
That’s the cage.
He needs me to believe I ruin everything so he doesn’t have to face who he’s become.
But that’s not me. That’s not who I am.
As I stare at him, at the man I thought knew me inside and out, I realize he doesn’t know me at all. And finally, a different man’s voice rings louder.
“You’d be shocked to know how incredibly enough you are, just the way you are.”
The pain doesn’t vanish. It never will.
But it shifts. Just like that.
My hand quivers as I tug the ring off my finger. The diamond glitters under the light, a promise I thought would bind us back together, when really it chained me tighter. I step forward and press it into his palm, folding his fingers around it.
His mouth parts, a flash of panic in his eyes, but I shake my head. Tears streak hot down my cheeks. “No, Alex,” I whisper, steadier now. “I didn’t break you.”
He winces, eyes flickering with regret.
“You broke yourself.”
I stagger back, curl my fingers around the doorknob, and turn it. The sound is small, but it echoes like a crack of thunder.
The door clicks shut behind me.
And for the first time in years, the silence belongs to me.