Chapter 13
RAUL
…present day
My cell feels even smaller in the dark. I lie on my cot staring up at the empty gray ceiling, the concrete stained in places where moisture has pooled and left darker patches behind.
The judge's words keep replaying in my head.
A plea is not forgiveness. It is not a promise. It is an agreement, if one can be reached, and the terms will matter.
The idea of a lesser sentence sends a shiver straight through me. Not because I believe I deserve it. Because I don't. I can't seem to wrap my head around the fact that I'm being given a chance to be heard at all. To be considered. To maybe, somehow, not lose everything.
Including Olivia.
Fuck.
I need to write her back.
I roll over and reach for my notebook, unhooking the pen from the spiral. For a second, I just sit there, tapping the pen against my bottom lip, staring at the page like it's going to decide what I feel for me.
What do you say to someone that kind?
She deserves so much more than this. More than silence. More than half-sentences and guilt and apologies that won't fix anything. Anything I could give her would still come up short. She deserves the whole world, and I'm trapped in a tiny box with nothing but regret and borrowed time.
I'm a lost soul.
And the worst part is that she still makes me want to try.
I can only manage to write one word.
Olivia,
That's all I've got. That's all I can give her right now, and even that feels like too much. Like I'm already reaching for something I don't deserve to touch.
My hand tightens around the pen until my fingers hurt.
I keep thinking about the look on her face that day. That sits in my chest like a brick. Because she didn't deserve that. She never did.
The last words I said to her were cruel.
"You don't fucking care. Stop lying to yourself. You're just a piece of shit like everyone else."
That's what she heard from me. That's what I gave her.
I tossed her aside after she told me the truth and admitted how she felt. After she said she loved me. After she wanted to be with me. She told me the truth and I punished her for it. I made her regret being honest with me. I made her feel like loving me was some kind of mistake.
I swallowed it all and spat out something ugly instead.
I drag a hand down my face and stare at the page again, my vision blurring at the edges. There's no fixing this. No clean apology. No perfect sentence that can make up for the fact that I took something beautiful and treated it like it was nothing.
And still, I want to write her name again.
I want to tell her I remember everything.
The way her voice softened when she said my name.
The way her hand felt in mine. The way I almost let myself believe I could have something good for once, something real, something that didn't come with blood on it.
But that's the problem.
I almost believed it too late.
Now she's out there somewhere with a life I don't belong in, and I'm in here trying to figure out how to say goodbye without making it sound like I'm still asking her to wait.
Because I know myself. I know what happens when I get selfish.
I know what happens when I start wanting things I can't keep.
And I want her.
God, I want her so badly it feels like hunger. But wanting her isn't the same as giving her anything. It isn't love if all I do is drag her into my ruin.
I press my lips together and write another line, then cross it out before I can even read it.
Too much.
I write a different one.
Too little.
Everything I try turns rotten in my hands.
So I sit there in the dim cell with the notebook open on my lap, trapped between what I feel and what I can survive saying, and for the first time it occurs to me that maybe the cruelest thing I've ever done wasn't pushing her away.
I look down at what I've got so far.
Olivia,
I need you.
That's all my brain can manage. That's all it can hold onto without falling apart completely. The words sit there on the page, simple and brutal, like they've been waiting for me to admit them.
And maybe that's the truth of it. Not that I'm sorry. Not that I regret everything. Not that I miss her, even though I do.
I need her.
I need her in a way I can't explain without sounding weak, without sounding desperate, without sounding like the kind of man who has nothing left to give except honesty.
I need her like air in a room that's been locked too long.
Like something I didn't realize I was drowning without until I finally surfaced.
The problem is, need is dangerous. Need makes you selfish. Need makes you say things you can't take back. Need makes you reach for people who already had the good sense to step away.
So I stare at the page, at the one line that tells the truth better than anything else I've managed to write, and I hate how much power it has over me.
Because if I send this, I'm not just admitting I want her.
I'm admitting I've never stopped.
I close the notebook after staring at that line for too long.
I need you.
My chest tightens. Simple. Pathetic. Honest enough to hurt.
I press the heel of my hand into my eye, then shut the notebook like that'll somehow shut the whole feeling down with it. It doesn't. Olivia's name is still there. Her voice is still there. The shape of her absence is still there, sitting in the room with me like something alive.