I wanted to stay and bleed at her feet. Because I found what I needed there.
My salvation.
It is said that pain comes in waves. Whether it’s emotional or physical.
The first wave hits you unexpectedly. It’s usually the most dangerous, the harshest wave.
The second wave, you’re ready for it, but it still hurts.
By the third wave, you’ve grown accustomed to it. The pain starts to take shape, to build up inside of you. Under your skin, inside your flesh, buried in your bones, deep in the marrow of you.
And slowly, your body grows numb.
Your mind goes numb.
You live with the pain; it becomes part of you.
The wave came and went. The pain stayed, with an angry stubbornness. The wound festered, oozing puss. The agony grew.
I drowned. I floated. I sunk to the bottom.
My mom always told me to honor the anger, to give pain the space it needed to breathe, to never run away from my emotions… to live and breathe it. This is how you learn to let go, she’d tell me.
But I didn’t know how to let go of the fury coursing inside of me, of the pain that chased me every waking hour and into my nightmares.
A dull throb spread across and around my scars, and I rubbed my chest, trying to alleviate the heavy pressure.
“Lila, you have to eat something.” Riley pushed the plate of pasta in front of me. “Just a few bites.”
The smell of the pasta had bile rising in my throat, and I choked on the sourness. My stomach churned with nausea. Maddox loved pasta. Actually, he loved the pasta I made, and I’d always make it for him, whenever he was feeling down.
I pushed the plate away and stood up. “I’m not hungry.”
“You barely ate anything in the last few days! You’ve already lost weight, babe. Just a few bites, at least,” she tried to reason with me. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”
Riley didn’t understand; she couldn’t. I didn’t want to eat, drink… or sleep.
I just wanted to fade away, to cease to exist.
The gala was four days ago. My world fell apart four days ago, and I still haven’t accepted that fact. How? Why? WHY? I wanted to scream at him.
But I refused to see him, to look into his beautiful face and let him hold me. To feed me his sorry excuses. I knew I’d let him win. I knew I was weak for Maddox.
He’d tell me he was sorry… and I was going to forgive him. He had that kind of power over me, and he proved to be my downfall.
Maddox Coulter was my damnation.
He was a mistake I shouldn’t have made four years ago. I should have never asked him to make that first pinky promise. It was the beginning of the end, as far as I was concerned. That was my mistake. That stupid pinky promise.
Friends?
Friends.
My phone rang, for the fifth time, in the last ten minutes. I glanced at it, even though I already knew who it was going to be. He had been calling me every day.
But today, he seemed especially persistent.
Maddox’s name flashed on the screen, as the call went to voicemail. With an angry wail that sounded like a broken record to my own ears, I tossed the phone at the wall. It bounced and slammed onto the floor, the screen cracking and going black.
The call ended.
The wave came again. It crashed into me, and even though my body had long grown numb to me, it still… hurt. I still drowned, gasping for air, gasping to stay alive.
Riley let out a soft sigh. “You have to talk to him. Just once, Lila. Not for his sake. But for your own. You’re hurting, and you need closure.”
“I don’t want anything from him,” I spat. “There’s no better closure than not seeing his face or hearing his voice.”
Riley walked to where my broken phone laid. She picked it up and handed it to me. “How is this closure?” she asked softly.
My fingers brushed over the fractured screen, and my skin caught on one of the cracks. A tiny prick: a sharp sting, like a paper cut. Blood gathered around the littlest cut. Bleeding.
I fisted my hand, hiding the wound. Oh, how ironic.
Riley grasped my wrist and slowly uncurled my fingers. Her gentle touch skimmed over the cut. “This is not closure, Lila.”
My heart stuttered, and I blinked back the tears. “I can’t hate him. I tried, and I can’t. But I also don’t want to forgive him. I can’t forgive him.”
Maddox’s betrayal cut deep, so deep… there was no way for me to reach it and wrap a bandage on it. I couldn’t stop the bleeding, couldn’t stop the wound festering into something nastier, something more agonizing.
How does a wound heal when it can’t be bandaged or stitched?