Chapter 55 ALEX
ALEX
I’m home for over a month before I’m ready to talk to Theo, and I can’t sleep at all the night before I see him. I lie in bed, trying to imagine what might happen, but every scenario seems wrong.
When Bailey picks me up, she glances at me as I get into the car, concern clear on her face.
“Can I ask?” Bailey’s voice is quiet as she pulls away from the curb, and I sigh.
“I saw him do it,” I say quietly. “I don’t know how I feel about him now.
” Bailey doesn’t say anything, but she grips my hand in hers and squeezes hard, and I barely talk to her for the rest of the short drive there.
I sit there and bite my nails, which I haven’t done since I was a kid, steeling myself for dealing with him.
I want to take a Xanax because I’m so nervous, but I can’t be off guard with Theo. I don’t know how he’s going to act, but I’m expecting that he’ll lie to me and try to manipulate me to get what he wants.
That’s all he does, apparently.
I’m a ball of nerves as I sit there, waiting. I’m so grateful that he saved me, but I’m also furious and heartbroken, and I can’t even begin to explain how I felt watching him kill Danny. I’ll thank him for saving my life, but after that, I don’t know what I’ll do.
I could leave him here to rot, which is probably what I should do.
The second I see him enter the room, I go numb.
Theo looks terrible. He’s thinner, his hair is longer, he hasn’t shaved in days, and he has such defined purple circles under his eyes that it seems like he hasn’t slept in a long time.
He moves slowly, his eyes cast downward, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so subdued.
The second he sees me, he jerks in surprise and his face transforms from a drawn, blank look to something almost feral, terrified and upset and wanting. Familiar tension returns to his body instantly, and he freezes in place for a moment before walking towards me slowly.
Everything about him seems sharper to me now, like there’s an edge to him I’d missed.
I don’t move as he sits across from me, and we watch each other warily.
I know this is probably the last time I’ll see him, but I don’t know how I feel about that yet.
All I can feel is pain as I look at him, and it takes me a long time to pull myself together enough to speak to him without screaming at him.
“You’re not a shitty liar after all.” Theo flinches as if I’ve slapped him.
“I didn’t know how to tell you about the tracker,” he says, his voice hoarse and quiet like he hasn’t spoken much lately.
“You lied in the car,” I say, forcing down my tears. “You said if I stayed with you, everything would be okay.” Theo freezes, his eyes widening. “Nothing’s okay,” I choke out, and he looks so horrified that I have to turn away from him.
Not for the first time, I wonder if it shouldn’t have listened to his bullshit lies, shouldn’t have clung to his every word and fought to stay with him. I didn’t want to die, but if I’d kept shrinking into nothingness, I wouldn’t have to live with all this pain.
I wouldn’t have to sit here and wait for him to break my heart again.
I force down all my feelings and I watch him closely for any signs that he’s lying or manipulating. I watch the way he looks at me, his hopeless face full of love and concern and longing, and I listen closely to the desperate, resigned tone of his voice as he tells me I owe him nothing.
When he begs to speak, I let him, trying hard to keep my face neutral as I brace myself for his bullshit. He starts speaking rapidly, like he’s expecting me to get up at any moment.
“...I’m glad I lied about it,” he rushes out. “You would have made me take it out, and then you wouldn’t be sitting here.” For just a moment, I want to kill him because he’s such a fucking asshole.
He’s also right.
He keeps talking, and his rationalization for why he refuses to take accountability for his bullshit is somewhat understandable.
I can begrudgingly see where he’s coming from, and that he wasn’t being malicious, just extremely fucking selfish.
None of it makes me less angry, but the more he talks, the more I can tell something about him is different, but I can’t tell what.
He leans towards me, and something about his expression changes from desperate and pleading to smug.
“I’m especially not sorry about killing Danny,” he says, and I freeze, watching him carefully as he tells me he was always planning on killing Danny.
Oh, my god.
“...so fucking happy I got to make him suffer,” he says in a harsh whisper, smiling for a fraction of a second. My eyes go wide at how predatory and unhinged he looks, at how delighted he is with himself, and I realize what’s different about him.
He’s exactly the same person, but he’s finally being honest with me.
None of this is what I expected from him, and I sit there trying hard to hide my shock as he apologizes for hurting me and flatly refuses to apologize for anything else.
He seems so devastated, so fucking resigned to the fact that he’s lost me, but he doesn’t beg, or plead, or manipulate – he just accepts it.
When he tells me he just wants me to be happy, I know it’s the truth.
My heart breaks for a fraction of a second as he lets me go, but when I realize what it means, my breath catches as my heart lodges itself in my throat. All the hope I’ve been shoving down and pushing away leading up to stepping into this room breaks free and floods back into me.
I’ve spent the last two months thinking Theo couldn’t put what I need above what he wants, and maybe he wasn’t able to before, but he can now. I thought he’d saved my life for himself, so he could keep me, but now I’m realizing he might have done it purely for my sake.
Something fundamental has changed between us, because something’s changed with him.
I didn’t know he could love me like this.
I try to keep a grasp on my anger, on the betrayal and the heartbreak, but a deep pang of longing cuts through all of it.
Theo looks so completely devastated and hopeless, and for a second, I’m back on that bed with him standing over me, covered in blood and begging me to wake up.
Something warm and soft and aching flows through me, and I let myself truly feel it for the first time in months as I watch him sit there and give me that look like he’s memorizing me.
Fucking Theo.
I remind myself that it’s entirely my choice what happens. I’ve got all the control now, and I could walk out and leave him for good. I could scream at him and insult him and force him to feel all the pain I’m feeling, and then I could testify against him, just to spite him.
Or I could forgive him.
I could have him back.
He stares at me with his teary, bright hazel eyes, leaning slightly forward across the table as if drawn to me, and I hear my dad’s voice run through my head for what feels like the millionth time.
“Alice, there’s no such thing as a second or third chance when you truly love somebody – there’s only another chance.”
I could give Theo another chance. I think he deserves another chance. I don’t have to give him one, and I probably shouldn’t, but I want to so fucking badly.
I have spent months trying to talk myself out of loving him, but nothing has worked.
No matter how hard I’ve tried to convince myself that I hate him, all the anger and heartbreak haven’t made the slightest dent in my feelings for him.
I curl up in bed alone every night, afraid to go to sleep and desperately missing Theo’s arms around me, and whenever I wake up from a nightmare, I reach for him.
I walked in here assuming that he’d lie and try to manipulate me and break my heart all over again, that I’d have to walk away from him for good, but that’s not what’s happening. Instead, he’s finally giving me the option to love him, and he’s not even trying to.
I think some of that therapy got through to him, even if he’d never admit it.
I want to make the right choice, but I don’t know if there is one.
I think I just have to choose if I want Theo exactly as he is.
He’s so sweet, and thoughtful, and gentle, and insecure, and wonderful.
He’s so desperately, pathetically in love with me that he’ll do anything for me, even if it means growing as a person.
He’s also kind of insane, and terrifying, and manipulative, and deeply damaged, and my fucking stalker, but choosing him means choosing all of him.
I know he’s mine, whether I want him or not.
Fuck it, I want him.
I was always going to choose him if he gave me the option, and he just did. I have no reason to trust him, but I’m going to anyway.
I can’t tell if I’m insane or if I’m making the best choice of my life, but I think it’s possible that both are true. I almost laugh at how ridiculous it all is.
“You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?” The corner of Theo’s mouth rises slightly in a small, crooked smile, and my stomach flips.
“You just figured that out?”
God, I missed him so much.
For one brief moment, everything feels impossibly good between us, and then all the pain and rage floods back into me, and I remember precisely how fucking angry I am with him.
“No, Theodore,” I snap, “I figured it out when the doctors pulled a fucking tracker out of me.” Theo flinches slightly, and I let my anger get the better of me and start tearing into him, watching him grow paler and wider-eyed the more I speak.
When I tell him he broke my heart, he seems to implode, leaving him looking completely hopeless and empty.
I’ve seen him look at me like that before, and the rest of the words die on my tongue.