Chapter 41 Aston
Aston
Years from now, when Vale and I are happily married, living the dream as star NFL player and enviable trophy hubby, and this is nothing but a memory…
I’ll look back on today and see it for the turning point it was.
In our story…
In my story.
I’ll recall his parting words without black holes spotting my vision and cotton muffling my ears and a vice constricting my throat, so cold and clinical it makes me ache for the blazing, unrelenting grip of calloused fingers.
But I’m not there yet. Far from it.
So instead, I’m just left…confused. And something else I don’t want to look at too closely.
Something that has me wiping my cheeks, rushing out of my room, and locking myself in the bathroom where I can fall apart under the roar of the shower, and tell myself it’s just hot water streaking down my face.
Just the steam that has my lungs fighting for air.
Just the chill from the air seeping in under the curtain that has me shaking so hard my teeth chatter, despite the heat of the water.
“I don’t want you.”
“And you don’t want me either. Not really.”
“I forgive you.”
“Please leave me alone. I swear I’ll do the same.”
Try as I might to summon forth my usual flair for flippancy and ironclad resilience, neither are anywhere to be found. It’s as if he took all my carefully nurtured sunshine and snuffed it out with his frigid, apathetic darkness. Leaving me with nothing.
“I forgive you.”
Nothing but lingering bruises and fresh cuts and this…this gaping, hungry black hole in my brain. One I’m finding harder and harder to ignore and steer clear of.
“I forgive you.”
And no, it doesn’t escape me that it’s because of him. Because of Vale, my Vale, the little mouse I once vowed to protect…
It’s because of him I keep finding myself lured toward it. Toward those black icy depths where secrets lie. Their bottomless truths I fear I’ll never surface from.
“I forgive you.”
As desperately as I try to will it out of existence, there is a part of me that is excruciatingly aware of just how stupid this all is. Me chasing after him.
How reckless and dangerous it is.
Selfish, even…
So terribly, terribly selfish.
And cruel…
I seal my eyes shut and summon forth Rick’s lifeless eyes. His blood-stained face. His lifeless, blood-soaked corpse.
I did that.
I did that.
And Vale hates me for it.
“I forgive you.”
No. Nonono.
I hug my knees even tighter to my chest, suddenly all too keenly aware of just how desperately I wish someone would hug me. Hold me. And not because I…I forced them or manipulated or tricked them into it.
I want them to hold me because they genuinely want me in their arms. Me, and not just what my body can do for them.
I thought I could find that with Vale. Why, you might be wondering. How, you might be thinking in disbelief, or even disgust.
The answer is simple:
For as rough as he’s been—cruel even…in touch, in words, even in how he looks at me…
In his arms, I know I’m safe.
And I know I’m wanted for more than just the holes I provide, despite what he might tell himself. Despite what he tells me.
The tiny cuts on my sore lips say as much.
The fact I still breathe reaffirms it.
And all the ways he’s looked at me since I swept back into his life. From glares to vacant stares, and every unreadable glance in between…
In the aftermath of what happened that day in the locker room, when he realized how close he came to hurting me—actually hurting me—all wide-eyed and shocked and maybe even a little scared, as unlikely as that sounds…
It just serves to drive home what I already knew in my heart.
My Vale is still in there, psychopath or not.
The one who knew me before. The only one I ever trusted to actually fully let my guard down with. The one I decided would be mine forever—that I would keep him always—when I was only seven years old. All because he decided to speak to me. Me. After not using his voice for months.
Even as a child, I understood just how huge that was—the trust he placed in me. How precious that gift was…something to be treasured and protected at all costs.
I wanted to be his entire universe.
I wanted to be his everything.
And for a brief moment in time I was…
What did I do?
What did I do?
What did I—
He’s different now, yes. Or perhaps he’s who he was always going to be, with or without me. Cold and forbidding and hardened in a way that tells me the trust he handed over was a one-time deal. Something all but impossible to earn back.
“I don’t have to do the right thing here. I really don’t. You have no fucking idea how badly I want to do the wrong thing…consider this a debt paid.”
That’s what hurts the most about this, I think.
It’s not this Vale who doesn’t want me.
It’s my Vale who doesn’t.
Or rather, my Vale who’s fighting our undeniable chemistry tooth and nail.
That’s who won out in the end. That Vale who made his choice today—a choice I have to respect, right?
I told Quentin as much last night—ripping away any future I may have had with the one I’ve only just started to get to know.
The one whose freak matched so well with mine.
The one that makes my heart feel like it could burst from my chest with a single graze of his eyes.
Nazareth was right. Love does fucking hurt.
Not that I’ve had much experience with it.
And yet, somehow in spite of everything, I keep…hoping. I keep dreaming. I still…want it.
To love and be loved and be grossly attached to another human being. Unconditionally. Forever and always.
“You don’t deserve to feel good.”
I know, I know…
“You’re chasing something that not only doesn’t exist…but something that will only hurt you in the long run.”
I know…fuck, do I know.
I was a fool to think I could pry us from such a thorny past and find some semblance of happiness with what scraps of me are intact.
People like Vale and me…
We don’t get happy endings. Not because of what we went through…but because of what it turned us into.
A blight on the world.
But we will push forward, because what other choice is there?
My story isn’t over.
Our story isn’t over…
Far from it.
And we will continue to fool ourselves and chase some semblance of peace as if it’s something we’re worthy of. Something we could actually obtain and sustain. Something beautiful and good and not tainted in the least.
Call it a necessary evil. A kindness.
A sweet, wicked thing, these lies we live by.