Page 69 of Our Ruined Beginnings

Before I can move away, give myself some breathing room, he reaches out, taking my face between his palms. The blood on his hands clings to my face, the bitter tang assaulting my nose, but I can’t find it in me to care, not when he’s looking down at me like this.

Like the world suddenly makes sense in the most heartbreaking of ways.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispers, his breath coasting along my lips as he presses his forehead to mine. Tears spring to my eyes, mirroring the emotions lingering in his voice. “So, so sorry, Lilypad.”

He moves his lips along my jaw, my cheeks, pressing light kisses against the tear tracks as they weave down my skin. When he reaches my mouth, he hesitates for a moment, and I heave in a deep breath, shaking my head as I pull away just enough for our eyes to meet.

“Let’s not do this. Please,” I choke out, pushing against his chest and stepping back. He lets me go, watching me as if his heart aches just as mine right now. “You need to go.” I need him away from me. I can’t think with him here, and my mind is full of swirling memories that I can hardly bear to process.

“I can’t, Harper. I can’t leave you again.”

“Fine,” I breathe, taking another step away from him. “I’ll leave.”

My flight instinct kicks in, and without properly thinking, I push past him, running out of the open door as he calls after me.

His stare is heavy on my back, his voice loud as he pleads with me to stop, but I don’t. I carry on down the stairs, out the main door, and across the grass, no destination in my mind—just the need to be alone.

It isn’t until I’m in the courtyard, my clothes heavy with rain as a storm I barely notice rages in the sky, that he reaches me, his hand curling around my wrist and halting me in my tracks.

He spins me, his eyes swimming with sorrow as he drags them over me.

“Let’s go back inside,” he offers, but I’m far beyond reasoning with him. I tug my arm from his grip and walk farther away, heading God knows where. “Lily,” he calls, and suddenly, the emotion threatening to suffocate me isn’t sadness—it’s fury.

“No,” I bark, twisting around to him. “You don’t get to call me that. You don’t get to pick things up and pretend these last few months didn’t happen. That you didn’t thoroughly fuck everything up without even talking to me first. You blamed me. You tormented, teased, and fucking tortured me for something I didn’t even do.”

“I didn’t know, Harper,” he says, as if that’s any kind of defense. I don’t even bother to ask how he knows now; it’s irrelevant.

I walk back, stopping right in front of him so he can see I mean every word I speak.

“It shouldn’t have mattered. It was us against the world. Then I woke up, having lost my best friend, and I needed you more than ever, but instead, I watched youchooseto walk away from me. You never even asked what I remembered about that night, or tried to get to the bottom of it. When have Ieverbeen that girl—the one who would put everyone I love at risk? I had no idea what I was waking up to, and instead of being there, you accused me, and I trusted you. I believed you. I didn’t even think that I couldn’t have been at fault, becauseyousaid it, so I believed it. You not only doubted me, but you made me doubt myself too. I could never do that to you. There isn’t a thing in the world you could have done that would have made me walk away the way you did. I was so alone, and you just left.”

“I know,” he says softly, the water dripping from his lips. “I will never be able to say sorry enough.”

“No, you won’t. Because it’snotenough. I don’t want your apologies, or your guilt. I want back the months you stole from me. I want to be able to look at you and not see the boy who abandoned me. Whoterrorizedme.”

“I can do that, Lily. I can be that for you.”

“No, you can’t.” I laugh bitterly. “Don’t you get it? I can’t wake up tomorrow and pretend all this never happened; not the way you seem to want to.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” he says, tilting his head as he blows out a breath. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come to me when you figured it out?”

“When would I have done that? When you were busy reminding me of the most traumatic thing I’ve ever been through? When you stopped throwing insults at me just long enough to fuck me? Every time I thought we were moving forward, you threw it back in my face. You never wanted to hear anything from me, so why on earth would you be the person I went to when someone else fucked me over instead of you?”

“You don’t understand—”

“No, you’re right. I don’t. I don’t understand how you could treat me like that.”

“Let me explain, let me make it up to you.”

“I don’t want you to. I don’t wantyou, Madden. Because if these months have shown me anything, it’s that your feelings toward me are fickle. And if you could do that to me once, what’s to say you won’t do it again when something bad happens? I won’t be the girl who waits around for you to decide when you want to play nice. It’s taken me all this time to be strong enough to not accept your crumbs. I’m not going back there now.”

I can’t. No matter how much my body craves him, how I miss him so much it physically aches, I can’t let myself hope for him,us, again.

“Harper.” He reaches for me, a mad desperation in his eyes, but I step back, letting the tears fall with the rain down my face.

I take him in, try to commit his face to memory—as if I ever have a chance of forgetting it—and then I leave him there. It doesn’t feel nearly as satisfying to be the one to walk away.

Madden

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