Page 100 of Forgiving Fate

Landon: I’ll be home in two hours. I’m coming over if I do not hear from you.

7PM:

Landon: 10 minutes away. I’m sorry.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Allie

I lay on myback in the open field next to the place I call home and stare up at the stars slowly fading away behind the clouds. The grass is soft below me and I can feel the wetness from the ground slowly seeping into my clothes.

One year. They have been gone for one year and here I am lost and broken beyond repair.

I search my mind for an ounce of salvation. An ounce of peace or light at the end of the tunnel, but I find nothing.

I may be saved from the monster that haunts my nightmares. I may be in this small world that is Cliff Haven. I may have a group of people waiting for me to give them the okay to surround me with love and care. But none of that means anything right now.

I know it should. I know I should see the positives and try to accept the help that they are wanting to give me. I know I should lean on the person who started as a stranger but is now a fellow lost and lonely dark soul. Or try to face the girl who I know wants to right the wrongs that she didn’t commit. But I can’t.

I can’t because no matter what I do. No matter how hard I try. No matter how much time has passed, the images and voices arestill there. Whether I am sleeping or awake, they play in my head like a horror movie on repeat.

It’s not your average horror movie where the monster lurks in the shadows. Or one where the girl hears a bump in the night while she is alone and she runs toward the sound to check it out.

It’s a different kind of horror. It’s one that shows all the happy moments of the life I once had. The memories of my parents and I on vacations. The nights where we stayed up until two am watching cheesy rom-coms and trashing them the entire time. The days where Lo and I would come home from school and Mom would sit at the table and beg us for all the juicy gossip while Dad made us dinner and pretended not to listen.

I can still hear the laughter. And almost like life is playing one big prank on me, when my eyes are closed, I can smell the fresh ocean air or the smell of the many beach bonfires we all shared countless times. My eyes fly open because for a millisecond I thought I was stuck in some dream and fell asleep while listening to them. When in cruel reality, they were the dream and this hell I am living in is the reality.

I try to recover from the horrible movie but there is a part two. A part that leaves me more damaged than the first.

I can see myself laughing. I see myself singing at the top of my lungs on the way to help the babies that brought me so much joy even on their bad days. I see myself loving life with my friends and family.

I always brace for the moment where things shift and replay the moments in that basement. The moments when I watched him take my parents’ lives and left me empty and hollow. The moments where I gave up because Logan washistrue objective. She had more to live for than I did, so what was the damage if I lost the battle?

Fate is evil and the deck of cards I was dealt isn’t kind. But they never place those pieces in the movie or the ones that made me numb to life.

Instead fate replaces the pieces where I had to sit for hours to try to force my mind to not believe the lieshewas saying because there was no way that Logan was part of this elaborate plan to kill me and my parents.

There was no way she was behind all the mental hell and abuse I experienced for weeks.

But the truth is, I did believehim. I allowedhiswords to seep into my brain and alter the way that my life played out. I allowedhimto become a puppeteer of my own mind and dohisdirty work, which ended in givinghimexactly whathewanted.

Her.

I am the reason my parents are dead. I am the reason Logan was almost killed when all she did was try to protect me.

It’s all my fault.

A raindrop hits my face and I open my eyes to see the clouds have completely covered the stars above me and are ready to open up. The only light comes from the headlights of my car parked in the driveway.

I should be tucked safely inside the cabin, so when Landon returns from his mission, I am sitting, waiting to hear what he has been wanting to say. But the silence is too deafening.

So instead, I lay here with the rain falling on me, completely soaking me to the bone and for the first time, I let myself feel the pain.

I let myself remember all the moments I blocked out. For the first time, I let myself feel all the touches that were never wanted. The thousands of wordshescreamed inches from my face of how I failed as a person and would never be anything buthispawn. I let myself remember the moment I gave in and stopped fighting.

My eyes close tightly and I allow myself to hear the screams of my mom ashemade her watch ashetook the love of her life inches from death’s door. Followed by my father’s small cry ashedid the same thing to her. I watch as the monster turnshisback and my father uses his last ounce of strength to reach out and link his pinky with the love of his life.

I let myself see and hear the moment their glassy eyes met mine and their whispered I love you’s as the light faded from their eyes.

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