Chapter 37
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Luna
Roman tries to make sure I'm okay, but despite my shock, I am. I expected guilt to hit me, but all that hit me was a feeling of complete peace. He won't text me anymore. I won't be followed. I won't have to bail him out of any more trouble.
It's over.
"Luna, talk to me," I hear Roman say from my left.
"Am I a horrible person if I enjoyed watching the life drain from him?" I ask. I don't regret what I did, but I worry this might change me.
"Luna, you put an end to a situation that's been eating at you for years. He deserved much worse than he got. He deserved to live months, years in fear like you did," he declares, and I can feel the anger emanating from him.
I'm glad he's coming home with me. I don't want to lose another second not being with him because of Aidan.
"All I could think about was Roxy and those three men standing over her. They would have raped and hurt her. I thought about everything I felt when he told me the explosion was at the house where you were. I felt my heart breaking, and I put all that helplessness into my hand when I pushed that knife," I tell him as a sort of confession.
Maybe I could have forgiven him if everything had stopped with me. Maybe I could have moved on, even with him still in this world, if he hadn't involved Roman and Roxy. Or maybe I should have been stronger long ago, and it wouldn't have come to this.
But I can't change the past. And my actions put the only people who've always been there for me in danger.
"Your wheels are turning again, and judging by your face, they're not turning well," Roman tells me because, obviously, he's figured out what I'm thinking. "Luna, he deserved to die just for making you afraid of your own shadow. For each panic attack, he deserved another knife in a different part of his body. You showed him sympathy in the way you chose to end him," he says, and every word is said with such confidence that I can't help but believe him.
"Okay," is all I can answer.
I know I'm not the strongest, and maybe I'll never jump out of a car with a machine gun like Julia does, but I've realized I'm okay with the idea of hurting someone who caused suffering to someone I love. And I'm okay even if that person has to die, as long as the people I love are safe.
If I had let Aidan leave alive, I know inevitably I would have found him back in my life. Maybe not right away. Not in a month. But he would have returned, and who knows if I would have been as lucky then as I was now.