Go.
Run.
Fight.
Do something.
Say something.
Paralysis seizes my limbs. Air evacuates my lungs. Rigor mortis sets in.
This is what death feels like. The shattering, unstoppable separation between life and the bleeding remains of the soul. There’s no countermeasure. No resuscitation. I’ve taken my last breath as Jake Holsten’s girl.
Movement shifts in my periphery. Blonde hair sways as she pulls on clothes. Then whispering. Soft, shared words between lovers. I can’t hear them because that fucking song.
It’s not a beautiful war.
It’s disgusting and cruel.
Make it stop.
I spin toward the sound and smack the phone off the dresser. It hits the hardwoods, killing the music. But my hands keep going, swinging and slapping and grabbing until everything crashes to the floor. Belts, cologne, books, hats. The last to go is a shoe box.
It lands at my feet, and the lid falls off, spilling its contents.
Letters.
Hundreds of letters written in metallic brown ink with gold flecks.
I remember the day I bought that shimmery marker in Chicago. It was a terrible, lonely day, and that marker was everything. Because it matched the color of his eyes.
Stillness suffuses the room. Blood roars in my ears, pulses in my neck, and throbs painfully in my abdomen.
Sara yanks up a zipper, breaking the trance.
My lungs convulse into sudden, agonizing wheezes, billowing my chest and shortening my breaths. My limbs shake heavily, uncontrollably, and spasms contract the muscles and arteries around my heart, squeezing out the light.
I fight the surge of tears, because dammit, I refuse to breakdown in front of him. “You knew I was coming.”
It takes great effort to meet his eyes, and when I do, it’s like staring at a stranger.
He perches on the edge of the bed and holds the sheet around his waist, looking back at me with the hard eyes of a grown man. He won’t be nineteen until next month, but he appears older, the stubble on his face thicker and darker, his jaw more chiseled, like a square block of stone. But it’s the expression on his gorgeous face that makes him unrecognizable. It’s empty, cold, dead… Everything I feel.
“Conor.” Sara approaches, fully dressed. “I didn’t know.”
Didn’t know I was coming? Does it matter?
I won’t look at her face. I don’t want to see the pity there. There’s enough of it in her voice to curl my stomach.
“I’m gonna go.” She slips around me and starts to close the door behind her.
I catch the edge and push it open. I won’t be far behind her.
Give him a chance to explain.
“Why did—?” My voice strangles. Start with something easy. “Why did all the phones get disconnected?”
“That was Dad. I don’t know why.” Low and deep, smooth and languid, his voice rolls through me like a drug.
“You had my number.” I quiver with the despair of an addict and toe the letters with my boot. “Why didn’t you call me? Or write back? Or…or…I don’t know, maybe pretend I still existed?”
“I had to let you go.”
“Let me go,” I echo hollowly. “Why?”
“It was easier.”
“Easier than what? Shooting me a message and telling me to fuck off?”
“Yeah.”
I burn beneath waves of abject pain, my tongue wrapped in slimy, poisonous truths. “You got my email and knew I was coming today. You wanted me to find you with her.”
Muscles ripple along his locked jaw, and his gorgeous brown eyes pin me with frosty silence.
A crack runs through the childhood bridge that connects us. Suspension cables snap. Beams twist and tear away. Piers crumble. The link between us collapses, leaving a yawning void as deep and vast and dark as an ocean.
I feel myself falling in. Breaking beneath the heavy, jagged shards. Gulping for air at the bottom of oblivion.
“Is it because I’m ruined?” I battle the instinct to hug myself, to protect the vulnerability.
“What?” His eyes narrow dangerously.
“The night in the ravine… I’m used. Dirty. Worthless.”
“No. Jesus, Conor.” He stands, clutching the sheet to his groin and scans the floor. “That’s not it at all.”
“Then what is it?” I grab his jeans and toss them into the hall. “Was Sara a virgin? Now that she’s not, will you be done with her, too?”
“Dammit, Conor. No! I mean, yes. No, that’s not… Fuck!” Holding the sheet around his waist, he yanks at the far corner where it stubbornly clings to the mattress. “You don’t get it.”
“I get that you threw me away. Because it was easier.” Easier than loving a used-up girl.
He uncurls his hand and stares at the scar on his palm, his expression stark. I press my thumb against my own scar. Levi Tibbs has served two years of his seven-year sentence. The blood oath hasn’t changed. We both know it.
I drop my arm. “I’ll see you in five years.”
He goes still, lips flat, eyes hard. That’s how I leave him.
With every step toward the front door, the dam inside me bows and splinters beneath the rattling, guttural groan of pressure. Head down, arms locked around a chest full of pain, I walk faster, harder, holding it in.