He cocks an eyebrow. “What?”
“Once I’m out of here, I’m coming for you and your whore,” I quote Joel word for word.
Finn clenches his jaw, his fists rolling into tight balls. “Why you? You didn’t do shit.”
“Yeah, but I was your girlfriend. It’s kind of smart when you think about it. What better way to hurt you than to go after the girl you loved?”
His eyes lift to mine, and he stares to the point of making me flinch. Then he says the one thing I wasn’t ready to hear.
“Love.”
I pause.
“What?”
“Love, present tense,” he corrects.
It feels like a herd of angry elephants is stomping all over my rib cage. He has no right to tell me that. He can’t just tell me he loves me without knowing how much it hurt to love him.
“Did you know that I couldn’t sleep after the accident?”
He seems taken aback by the redirection.
“And on the rare occasions that I did sleep, I’d have nightmares. Horrible ones. They were all in the same place. Your dad’s boat. The where never changed, but the ending always did. Sometimes you’d push me in the water yourself. Sometimes you’d hold my head underwater until I suffocated. But there was one dream that came back more often than the others. In that dream, all you did was watch. You didn’t move, you didn’t try to save me. You just watched.”
He winces at the details, but that doesn’t deter me one bit.
“I’d wake up in a panic every night, and the worst part wasn’t even the dream itself. The worst part was realizing that it wasn’t a dream. It was a memory…”
He doesn’t speak for a few seconds.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t have a choice.”
That’s his excuse?
I didn’t have a choice?
“Bullshit. We always have a choice,” I spit.
“You’re not listening to me, Dia. I didn’t have a choice.” He sits up, and I follow his lead. “When you fell into the water, I had no control over my actions. Fucking none. It was like I was eight years old all over again, a powerless little boy watching everything he loves get taken away from him. I wanted to save you, Dia. I’ve never wanted anything more in my entire life, but I couldn’t move a muscle. I couldn’t breathe or make a sound, I was paralyzed. I almost lost you because of my PTSD.” The thought infuriates him. “Fuck, I almost lost you because of my trauma. Never again…”
Tears have begun to amass in my eyes.
I guess, deep down, I’ve always known that there was more to the story. I always suspected that his inaction had to be related to his mother’s drowning. And as pathetic as it may sound, if he’d stuck around while I was in the hospital, I probably would’ve understood.
If he’d spent every night by my bedside, waiting for me to wake up. If he’d stayed after the accident, begging for my forgiveness, I would’ve eventually taken him back. I was so hopelessly in love with him that if he’d just shown me he loved me back, I would’ve gotten over it. In time. But he left. He abandoned me when I needed him the most.
And I’m starting to realize…
What hurt the most wasn’t that he accidentally let me die. It’s that he walked away from me and never looked back.
“Then why did you leave?And don’t say it was to protect me.” A lone tear escapes my eye, streaming down my face. Embarrassed, I lift my hand to dry my cheek, but Finn beats me to it, catching my tear with his index.
The sweet gesture startles me, but I allow it.
“I didn’t leave to protect you, Dia. I left because I couldn’t… And if I can’t protect the only person I love in this world, then I don’t deserve to love them…”
He’s changed a lot in the past year, but one thing remains the same: he still doesn’t believe he deserves happiness. He’s somehow convinced himself that because his mom lost her life, he doesn’t deserve to enjoy his.