Chapter 57
“HOLD ON” BY CHORD OVERSTREET
Ifeared I never understood true, blood-curdling agony until someone finally loved me.
Quinntessa was gone. I told her everything she needed to know until she finally left. Everything I had left in me was gone. She was gone.
It was over for now. No more . . . pretending?
After she left, I laid down on the bed where she had slept and didn’t bother with the blanket.
I turned and looked at the ceiling, wondering if she’d forget me in a few days, or maybe a week, possibly a month.
I thought about how many nights she would lie in that giant house alone, suffering through nightmares without me there to comfort her.
Everything felt numb. I was crying, but I couldn’t feel the burning in my eyes or the straining in my lungs. I couldn’t tell how bad it was until the sun set through the curtains and the ceiling fan above me crawled slowly in the opposite direction.
Each pass felt like hours, over my head and past my feet.
I laid there and replayed our argument in my head repeatedly.
I should have worded things better. I should have told her all the truth and not sugar-coated it.
I shouldn’t have used her brother as ammunition.
I should have corrected her when terror flashed in her eyes, hearing I had hidden a dog from her all this time.
At some point, my mother stopped in. I didn’t remember what she said or how she said it, but she sat on the edge of my bed for three passes of the fan, trying to comfort me before leaving and returning with Estelle.
My little girl laid with me, no doubt confused by my weak, half-witted behavior. Her tired eyes slipped off to sleep not long into her loud recount of her day, a reminder I wasn’t as close to my daughter as I should be. It was just another relationship I screwed up.
My fingers ran through her dark auburn hair, feeling the weight of her head on my chest. Her soft breathing brought tears flooding to my eyes. My throat was dry, each deafening breath in my ears battling the rapid beat of my dying heart.
When I heard quick, determined footsteps coming down the hall, it was completely black outside.
Lukas had whined for a while until he eventually gave up, scooting his toy into my side and lying by my feet.
His head only listed when the door to my bedroom was thrown open, close to slamming into the wall behind it.
“Q, you fucker?—”
I inched my head to the left. My spine screamed for relief as I moved in a new direction, the first in a while. It was enough to sprout a new round of tears in my eyes.
Erica wasn’t easy to calm down when she was angry. I could see the rage in her flaming eyes, her usually tan skin a strawberry dipped in sugary frustration. Still, with all those emotions, they slipped from her face as she took an uncertain step toward my bed.
“What happened?” she asked, eyes scanning me.
I looked back at the ceiling and swallowed my tongue along my sponge-dry mouth. My shoulders weakly shrugged, tears streaming freely.
“She loved me,” I rasped, the same thought that crossed my mind about fifty times today.
“She . . .” The bed dipped as Erica crawled to meet me in the center of the mattress. She kicked off her shoes and laid by my side, an arm thrown over Estelle and me. “She loved me.”
I felt my body shake as I swallowed. Violent trembles took over my body as Erica gently moved the sleeping child into her arms. It was like the weight change was all I needed to unlock the hold plugging the flood.
“She loved me,” I whimpered, squeezing my eyes shut tight. “Even after knowing about my family, she loved me.”
“You…” Erica frowned. “You told her about your family? Why the fuck are you both such a mess right now? I just found Quinntessa sobbing her eyes out and screaming like she was being murdered out on the tracks.”
The band snapped. It felt like letting go of a rubber band and watching the end come flying back toward me at full speed. The shakes turned into full earthquakes inside me. My chest heaved in a panic, and I finally released a vomit of sobs.
Estelle was startled out of her sleep as Erica quickly stood and stared at me. Through my blurry vision, I could see my friend struggling with what to do. She darted out of the room, only to return a few minutes later without Estelle.
I hugged Erica’s waist as she crawled to me, hiding my face in her neck. She rubbed my back and held me as I cried so hard, the room started to spin.
“You actually cared about her?” Erica sighed, holding my head and pressing her lips against my hair. “Oh, Ellie. What happened?”
“I-I’m a monster,” I murmured, shaking my head against her chest. “I’m a monster.”
Erica tried to comfort me the best she could. It helped some, but all I could think about was her—my sweet-faced, honey-eyed girl—out on the train tracks because of me. She cried because I was cowardly and couldn’t fight for her. I couldn’t save her because I was weak and meaningless.
I would be the one haunting her now.
Quinntessa would wake up at night because of me.
She’d scream and shout in her sleep, wracked with nightmares I caused her.
She’d battled the devil for so long, yet I brought him into her home.
I became a sadistic leech in her life and let my satanic fucking blood turn her into another angel destroyed by the devil.
My sweet girl. My pretty honeybee. My perfect Mustang.
I ruined her in all the worst ways.
And she still loved me. After all I had done, she looked at me with such love and desperation to fix something she didn’t break. I may not have killed her physically, but it pained me to think how much I murdered her mentally.
How much I destroyed her.