Chapter 48 Henry
Forty Eight
Henry
After Rachel crashed my monthly meeting with the residential team, I haven’t been able to show my face at work.
It’s only been two days, but I know my workload is already mounting up.
Any more time off and it will be chaos when I return.
This is the problem with being a control freak—I’ve tried to oversee too much for too long, and when I’m not in, no one knows what the fuck to do without me.
My phone has been pinging like mad, but I can’t look at it.
I can’t focus on anything while my head is fucked like this.
I’m too numb to function. The panic attacks were pretty constant yesterday.
Heart pounding, the feeling of a dumpster truck on my chest, and my limbs weighed down by ten-tonne weights.
All the normal symptoms, but a million times worse.
Even exercise or an ice shower did nothing to shake the feelings, so today I’m a walking shell instead of a human.
The stubble that’s grown on my face itches where I haven’t bothered to shave.
A therapist many years ago told me that journalling could help with my spiralling thoughts. I never took to the idea because I try to block out the noise, not focus on it even more by giving it life. However, yesterday I tried to write something down.
It started with the normal self-loathing, but soon turned into pages upon pages of letters I had tried to write to Matilda in the hopes of explaining myself. They all felt like excuses, so they all found their home in the bin.
I want so badly to pick up the goddamn phone and call her, plead and beg her to forgive me.
To let me hold her, to let me love her like I know she deserves.
But every time I pick up the phone my words dry up, my limbs go numb, and realisation dawns that there is no way she can ever forgive me for what I did.
I know the moment we have the conversation that what we have will be over, and the selfish arsehole in me believes that until that point, there is still hope.
Time is running out though—I know I need to see her, to explain, to bare my soul to her and show her my demons.
Otherwise, I will lose the love of my life—if I haven’t already.
It’s nothing more than I deserve. People like me don’t deserve someone so bright like her. She is sunshine personified.
A sharp knock at my door freezes all my spiralling, and I puff out a large exhale. Jasmine said she was coming round after work. I wanted to be on my own tonight in all honesty, but I know she worries about me when I’m like this, and I would do the same for her.
She knocks again, this time more forcefully.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming.” I bark, slight irritation in my voice.
I swing the door open and my damn heart nearly stops.
Because standing before me is Matilda, my sunshine.
Her bruises are fading and I can see the brownish yellowing of her skin that makes my blood run cold.
Her eyes are locked on mine with an expression I can’t read.
Her golden yellow curls are shorter—she’s cut her hair to just above her shoulders—and my breath catches in my throat at how fucking beautiful she is.
I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here, one arm on the door and one on the door frame, looking like a fucking deer caught in headlights, but it must have been long enough for Matilda’s expression to shift to confusion.
“Did you lose your memory after the accident? Hit your head a bit too hard maybe?” she says, knocking me out of my trance.
“W—what?”
“Well, you seem to have forgotten how to speak on the phone—and in person also, it seems.”
“Matilda—”
“Not here.” She gestures for us to go inside. “May I?”
“Of course.” I finally make my limbs move and allow her to come in.
She glides past me in a yellow blouse and tight light-blue jeans, smelling like fucking summer.
Her lightness feels at odds with the doom and gloom that has been my home since arriving back here, and it’s taking me a beat to wrap my head around what’s going on.
I follow her into my open-plan living room and see the mess I’ve left around for the first time. I’m instantly hit with shame that Matilda is seeing this side of me.
“Wow, did you have a party in here?” she comments, heightening my embarrassment. I grab dirty cups and bowls off the breakfast bar and clunk them in the sink.
“Do you want a, eh, drink?” I’m fumbling. This is definitely not how I imagined this encounter happening.
She doesn’t respond, just stares at me.
“We need to talk.” Her stare is something I’ve never seen before in her, almost like detachment or acceptance—I’m not sure. Panic is once again rearing its ugly head.
“Matilda, I know there is so much I need to say to you. There’s so much I’m sorry for—” But before I can carry on, she stops me.
“You broke my heart, Henry…” Physical pain lashes through my chest at her now pained expression.
“Not because you left me in that ambulance, but because you left me in the silence after. I can understand fear. I can understand pain. But what I can’t understand is why you didn’t trust me enough to share it with me.
” Her eyes are becoming glassy, and everything in my world crashes into place.
“I trust you with my life, Matilda. I just don’t trust myself.” I hesitate, wanting to step closer, to erase this space between us, but her expression stops me in my tracks.
“I told myself not to fall for you,” she breathes, half a laugh, half a heartbreak.
“And I told myself you wouldn’t,” I say—no bite this time, just the sound of something inside me breaking.
“Then I guess we were both wrong.”
The silence stretches like the tears in my heart. I’m bleeding out, as I watch it seep into the cracks beneath me.
“Every second without you has been torture, Matilda. And the worst part is, I did it to myself.” I’ve never done this, never bared my heart or soul to anyone.
Trying to get the words out is like pushing ten tonnes of solid stone up a hill, but the look on her face has finally broken my towering defences.
I need this, I need her, and I’ll cut my chest open and lay my broken heart bare for her to see if that’s what she needs.
“When I saw you lying there, I thought I had already lost you. I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t move. I was trapped in the same nightmare I lived when I lost my mother.
I watched my father crumble and, for the first time, I truly knew what that pain felt like.
You are my world, the light to my darkness.
You are my home, Matilda. But I was too broken to believe I deserved you. ”
“And now?” Her voice cracks, but I can see her holding back the tears that are so desperate to break free.
“I shut you out because I thought if you saw how dark it gets inside me, you’d run.
But losing you has shown me—I’d rather let you see all of me than live half a life without you.
” A choked sob leaves her and my feet move towards her before I can think better of it.
She is inches from me now, her glassy brown eyes staring back up at me, her cheeks flushed.
“You are the only light that has ever cut through the shadows I live with. And I’m terrified, because I don’t know how to be the man you deserve.
But I will spend my life learning, if you let me.
” My finger traces the curves of her face, feeling her breath shudder as I tuck a curl behind her ear.
I want to kiss her, to wrap her in my arms, but I can’t—not yet.
Her eyes are tracing my face, like she is trying to find the answers she is so desperately searching for.
“Matilda, please—talk to me.” A small sigh leaves her and my chest tightens as all my fears come rushing to the surface. I have really lost her.
“You don’t have to be perfect for me, Henry, because I sure as hell won’t be perfect for you.
You just have to be honest. I don’t want the version of you that’s put together—I want the real you, even when it’s messy, even when it hurts.
” A choked sound escapes my throat; I can’t hold it in.
The tears form—my old enemy I thought I defeated many years ago.
“Love isn’t just for the good days. It’s for the days when you can’t breathe, when you’re drowning, when you think the world is ending.
That’s when I want to be there most.” Her hand reaches up to cup my face, so gently.
“You think you’re too broken for me, but don’t you see?
It’s in those broken pieces I found the man I love. ”
Her words land on me like rain—clean, unblinking and healing.
We stand like that for a long time, teary eyes locked together.
I reach for her because not doing so felt worse than any fear.
My hands find her face, and when I draw her close the world narrows to the soft gasps of her breath and the thuds of her pulse against my chest.
I draw my lips down upon hers—almost painfully gentle, the kind of kiss that mends broken souls. She tastes like forgiveness and something braver—the promise of love.
Our lips part in a gasp for only a second, then I’m on her again.
I’m like a starving man now. We press together and Matilda kisses me back with the same level of longing I have had for her for too long.
Her light seeps into my darkness, making me whole again, and all I want to do is return her kindness, her light, and fix whatever I broke.
Each kiss is an apology, each hold a vow. I find her mouth again and again.
“I’m sorry,” I pant in between kisses and touches, “I’m so sorry. I love you.” I continue, not as repetition but as prayer. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
I can feel the tears on my face—I don’t know if they are mine or hers, or both of ours mixing together.
“Every day I will love you. I won’t shut you out again.”
“Stay with me through the dark, baby.” She whispers.
“Always, my sunshine.”