Page 49 of Scorpion

“Let me go,” I beg even though I’ve latched myself onto his clothes.

A tremor works through my voice because I… I actually don’t know if I want to go. I’m just so tired of living like I’m not meant to be alive. These past few months have been so good, and every day was getting slightly better. One step forward and two steps back. That’s always how it goes.

“I’m never going to let you go. I told myself that I wouldn’t attend another funeral this decade. Please don’t make me break that promise.” His anguished voice cuts me deeper than the glass did, and the first tear drops. It trickles down my cheek and soaks into his clothes. Then more fall.

How long has it been since I cried? I don’t think I did at Gaya’s or my team’s funerals. It was like a switch happened when the bomb went off. Why would Mathijs want someone like that? He needs someone strong and resilient. I’m a weak link. A killer lying in wake.

I shove him away, yet his hands remain on my self-inflicted wound, staunching the bleeding. “You missed me, right?” I growl. “This is what you wanted? I’m ruined, Mathijs. I’m broken beyond fucking repair. This is what you missed. This is all I’ll ever be. I wasn’t happy before I left this place. I wasn’t happy once I was gone. I don’t even know the meaning of that goddamn word. Now they’re all dead and I never got the chance to say goodbye.”

Tears spill into my mouth as I speak. With each word, the ache in my chest amplifies. Beneath it all is one emotion I recognize but haven’t truly grasped since they died: grief.

They’re gone and there’s nothing I can do about it. They’re gone and this is the first time I’ve spoken about them.

“You don’t know what I’ve been through.” I want to say more, but I don’t know how to form the words. I’m drowning in self-pity enough as it is.

“You think I don’t know what it feels like to lose everyone I’ve ever loved?” His voice is raw, teetering over the edge of vulnerability. “You want to end it? I get it. There hasn’t been a single person in my life since my parents died. What you lived for two years, I lived for six.”

Pain slices a path up my throat. “I opened my eyes, only to find that I’m the only one in my team who woke up. Then, in the same breath, they told me my entire family died due to engine failure—I didn’t even know she was going to see them. If I hadn’t been busy trying to prove myself, maybe she’d still be alive. If I were better at my job, maybe we could have avoided the attack,” I ramble, then snap my mouth shut.

Woe is fucking me. He’s telling me about his pain and I’m making this about me. How selfish and conceited could I be?

Still, he looks at me like he’s absorbing every word into his marrow. He pulls me closer, shrouding me in his shuddering breaths. “None of those things are your fault.” A tormented look flashes behind his eyes when he takes in the open wounds along my knuckles and palms. “I kept thinking you’d come back. And you did. But you never came to me. Not a single call. Not a text. Every single morning when I wake up, I feel sick to my stomach while I check my phone to see if you’ve died. And every night, I torture myself thinking that the next time I see you will be when you’re in a casket.”

My heart sinks into the floor, trapped under the weight of guilt. I didn’t even reach out to him when his parents died because I thought he would have been better without me. Like Mom said, Someone like him could never actually want you. Yet here he is, not wanting to let go when he should.

I drop my gaze to his hands, and the blood trickling from the one holding on to my wrists. He tightens his grip in my hair like he senses that I’m about to move away from him.

“This isn’t a competition. This isn’t about the sacrifices you made. This is me saying that you aren’t alone. You never were, Zalak.”

I shake my head, desperate anger bubbling through me. “I’m not good for you. I never was and I never will be. Why the hell won’t you get that? I’m not the seventeen-year-old girl you knew. I’m fucked in the head with no way to fix it. We can’t even be in the same car as each other. You can’t fly. If it weren’t for me, you’d be—”

“Dead. I’d be dead.”

My eyes snap up to his.

“I’m selfish. No one has been around to pick up my broken pieces until you came along.”

No. I refuse to believe that. “I’ve done nothing for you, Mathijs.”

“The only highlight of my day has been spending time with you. Just because I don’t need coddling doesn’t mean I don’t need attention. I’m as human as you are, and the only reason I’m still standing is because I felt like I didn’t have a choice. I want to make my parents proud and I knew you would come back one day—hoped for it, at least.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, willing the world to disappear for just a second. But the next thing he says has me staring into his green orbs and falling deeper into his hold.

“I want you to myself, in any shape you come in, because I’ll love you regardless of it. Jagged edges and all.”

I choke on a sob and wrap my free arm around him, not caring where all the blood is going. Mathijs’s voice curls around me like a cocoon. He grazes the line of my jaw, down to my arm where he grabs my waist to pull me onto his lap. I don’t have the energy to fight it, and I don’t think I want to.

“I don’t think… I’m not okay, Mathijs.” I curl my hands into fists to focus on my aching knuckles. “It doesn’t—I don’t know how I’m meant to do it—I can’t fix it. I don’t know how to. And you’d be better off…”

He nods as if he knows exactly what I’m about to say but disagrees wholeheartedly, and I couldn’t be more relieved. I’m so tired of having nothing but my own company. He’s been there for me these past few months, but I just couldn’t accept him.

“You don’t need to be alone to find yourself. Loving someone is being there to help them if they get lost along the way. It’s about growing together and becoming two different puzzles that create a similar picture.” Mathijs grasps my chin to tip my head up to his. “If you go, there would be nothing left inside me. So stay, Zalak. Fight me. Hate me. Do whatever you need to do to make yourself feel better. But don’t leave.”

What would be left of me if I walked out of here? I tried doing it all by myself, but it didn't work. I just… I needed a friend. And I’ve never been good at making those. If I hurt him again, I’m leaving and I’m never turning back.

I nod.

A sad smile crosses his lips—the type that says we won the battle, but not the war.

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