Page 68 of Pages of Amber

“Don’t push us away. We’re here and we want to–”

“No!” she screamed, her hands slapping against her ears. She wanted to be anywhere this heart rending pain wasn’t. Amber pushed away from the bed, the jarring movement of her right foot on the floor making her stumble. Noah reached out to steady her.

“Don’t touch me!” she hissed.

“You need to be on the bed until the doctor gets here.”

She shrieked again, her hands covering her ears and pulling at her hair. “Stop it! Stop telling me what to do all the time. I’m so sick and so tired of hearing it.” Her eyes roamed the room, unseeing. “I know I’m broken, imperfect, undeserving but I’m trying. Don’t you see that? I keep trying but you don’t care! None of you care. You want to take more of what I can’t give. You can’t keep doing this. Please. For once, leave me alone. I’m so tired of it.”

Tears poured down her face. Her throat ached. Her hands buried in her hair, pulling at her scalp so hard it hurt. Everything hurt so much.

Hands grabbed at her. She jolted and shook them off. Noah stood before her, his arms held out cautiously. His eyes were haunted as he stared into hers. When had he moved? Amber couldn’t bear him being so close. She would stain him. She would make him as broken as she was.

“D-don’t touch me,” she sniffled. She pulled away. “Don’t come near me. Go away.”

“Amber…”

“Stop. Just stop it. Don’t be stubborn, Noah. Please go away. I want to be alone. I don’t want to be anywhere near someone who hurts me as much as she did for years.”

Noah blanched, his eyes falling deeper into his pale face. He shook his head hard, brown locks falling everywhere. “No. I’m not like your mom. Don’t say that.”

He wasn’t, her heart rebelled along with him. Amber didn’t listen. She turned away and spoke the words she knew she would regret for the rest of her life. “No, you’re worse because you hurt me for your pleasure and amusement.”

The room echoed the devastating words bouncing against every wall, every surface and back between them. Noah stood frozen, his hands trembling at his sides. Amber was too scared to look into his eyes. She didn’t want to see more of the damage she had caused. His jaw worked so hard she thought she heard them make a click as his teeth knocked into each other. He wasn’t looking at her, his head turned away. It was almost like… he couldn’t look at her.

Her heart took another blow in her chest. She had done this. She had done this to them. It was all her fault.

“I never meant to hurt you and I’m so sorry that I did anyway. I’ll live with that regret forever, Amber.”

For some reason, the sound of her name on his lips had never hurt quite as it did then. In a few strides, he was out of the room before she could call him back, apologize, beg him to forget she had ever said that. It wouldn’t be of any use. The words were stuck in her throat along with her self-loathing. She was alone, left to the silence she had demanded for. The taunting silence, a predator she had been running from all her life. After everything she’d done to escape it, it had found her when she was at her weakest. Now, it fed on her despair, swallowing her up in its loneliness.

Amber fell to the cold floor, her knees giving up on her. Her ankle throbbed in protest, her heart hung by a thread and her tears, they unleashed themselves, her sobs racking over her so hard they shook the metal frame of the bed she leaned on.

But no matter how many tears fell, they couldn’t bring Noah back. They couldn’t make her feel less broken. Nothing could.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

SINKING.

She was sinking, left to the unknown depths that called her, lulling her in with a false sense of safety. She had fought them all her life. She had tried her best to stay afloat, to keep her sunshine. She had done everything she thought she could.

She was tired now.

Her heart ached, a little too battered and bruised. A final blow was all it needed to fall out of her chest. She laid on the carpeted rug in her room as footsteps sounded at her door. Dottie asked her if she would like anything to eat. She didn’t move. There was no fixing the twinge in her stomach when all she felt was the tear in her chest. Her eyes stung, her closed palm hiding painful half-moon prints from digging her nails in, her mind haunted by that horrible hallway argument. Like a nightmare, it replayed in her mind. Beverly’s words had cut deeper than skin. Maybe because she had been right. Maybe because deep down she knew she deserved to hear them and it had just been a long time coming. Then she’d done the worst thing. She had taken that hurt and poured it on the wrong person. Noah.

The fist in her chest squeezed harder. He would never forgive her. She had insulted him, thrown his fears in his face, mocked him with the very things he had told her in confidence and had basically pushed him out the door. If he hadn’t truly hated her before, there was no doubt he did now.

They had been at the brink of hope, a beautiful connection and so many possibilities between them. But she had ruined it. She had tripped off the cliff and dragged him down with her. They both laid at the bottom now, broken shards of what could have been.

A hot trail made its way down her cheek. More followed in its wake. From a trickle to a stream. Her wounds flowed freely as her tears did. Her cries were soundless, tearing out of her like the last prayers of a dying man. She gripped her arms, hugging them to herself. She was her only comfort now. She had always been her own safe space.

She wasn’t sure she felt safe anymore.

She lay against the floor, stripped of her strength. The tears continued to come. She let them, helpless to do anything to stop the pain.

“You won’t move it, Helena?”

The low threat laced in her mother’s voice gripped Amber by the throat. Goosebumps raced up her arms and she squeezed them tighter against her folded knees. Her back hunched forward, her hair a curtain around her as she listened.

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