My vision blurred so badly with tears I could barely see.
“She proved them wrong. I wish she hadn’t. It would have been easier if she’d died there and then. Every day she didn’t was another day I hoped she’d wake up. Because she got better. Slowly. So they took her in for another surgery. The tests said she’d make it. They wheeled her into recovery and she went.”
My voice cracked.
“She wasn’t strong enough. And I hated it. I was so angry. I didn’t speak to anyone for two weeks, and then when I did, it was all the things I hated about the world. I hated God for being a horrible person and taking my mom. I hated the people who shot her. Hated that she wasn’t strong enough to fight because I needed her. I hated my dad because he was alive and she wasn’t. But I never spoke about her. Not until I found her best friend crying. About two months after Mom died, I found her crying in Mom’s reading room because she couldn’t help me. She couldn’t make it better for me. And that’s all she wanted to do.”
Thick.
Tears.
Lump.
Pain.
It was a whirlwind of emotion in one package.
“Because I was being so horrible to everybody. I couldn’t cope with the hurt of losing her, but that was the first time I realized I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t the only one who missed her and wanted her back. I wasn’t the only person who was angry—at life, at God, at the injustice of the whole thing. She was, and my dad was, too.”
I looked up, finally. I could barely see Damien through my tears, but I was glad of that. I didn’t talk about that time and I sure as hell never cried in front of anyone else.
“It’s been fifteen years and I’m still angry. Every day. I’m angry right now. But it doesn’t consume me anymore because I won’t let it, because I know I can talk about it. I know that not holding onto it makes it easier to live and be happy. Mom wouldn’t want me to hold onto that anger. She wouldn’t want me to do anything but be happy and live and find someone to love me the way my father loved her.”
That was it.
The moment I broke.
The moment it all burst out of me, and the silent tears became heaving sobs that took over my entire body.
It was the moment Damien framed my face with his hands and pressed his mouth to my forehead.
And I cried a little harder.
Twenty-Four
Damien
She was shaking. I’d never seen a person shake as much as she was beneath my touch. Her crying filled the entire living room cutting through the now-silent air.
The loss she cried for was monumental. The pain and hurt that fueled every sob was palpable. If I tried hard enough, I could have plucked it out of the air and destroyed it.
I couldn’t.
I wanted to reach inside her and rip it away from her. Make it so that she never had to feel this kind of ache in her life ever again, because I knew how much she hurt.
I knew the loss. I knew that pain. I knew how it consumed you and reminded you of all the things you’ll never have again.
I pulled her into my chest. My arms wrapped around her tightly, and the urge to swallow her pain and feel it twice for myself was overwhelming.
I’d never cared before.
I’d never wanted to care. I’d never wanted to do anything to stop another person’s heartbreak, but I’d take hers in a fucking heartbeat if I could.
In this moment, her heartbreak was my heartbreak.
Seeing her cry was nothing short of gut-wrenchingly devastating.
This woman was a marvel—strong and smart and beautiful, fearless and unrestrained. I respected her, I trusted her, and I wanted her beyond belief.
Nothing. Nothing mattered more than making her stop hurting. Nothing mattered more than holding her and rocking her and smoothing her hair until she was all cried out. I didn’t shh her or try to stop her.
I held her.
Kissed her hair.
Squeezed her tighter.
Breathed her in.
Wiped her cheeks.
And she held me back. She buried her face into the curve of my neck, soaking me with her tears. She was nestled onto my lap, pressed so firm against my body that guilt licked at me everywhere we touched.
As her fingers twitched against my skin, the guilt flinched.
As her tears rolled down my chest, the guilt followed.
As she calmed every few minutes, whimpering, only to cry again, the guilt ebbed and flowed through me until it mirrored her grief.
I made her hurt tonight.
My refusal to tell her the truth about my life, about that fucking scar, about my fucked up, broken family, had driven her to relive her own hurt to the point she couldn’t breathe.