Page 107 of Haunt Me

I should be stronger for her, but for myself also.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. I’ve been silent for too long and she is thinking that I don’t want to talk.

“Don’t fu—don’t say that!” I bite back a curse. If she apologizes to me again, I’m going to go insane.

“I can see that you’re close to breaking.”

“We both are,” I reply.

She is standing so close I don’t know how I am not sinking my head against her neck. I could shut my eyes and breathe her in, feel her hair on my lips, her heart beating against mine. I could let my arms close around her waist and all of the world would disappear.

But she is wrong: I’m not close to breaking; I broke hours ago. I keep breaking and breaking.

I’ll break again in a few minutes when I begin to think of what she went through. I don’t want her to see me like I’m going to be for the next two days, crying, on my knees, going crazy with pain, trying to come to terms with all this ugliness. If I stand here talking to her for a minute more, I’ll start crying.

Right now, I can’t even see the future. I can’t see how we can fashion this pain into something beautiful.

All there is, is darkness.

“Ok, listen,” she says suddenly with this new, determined, strong voice I’ve barely had time to get used to. “You are tearing open your chest here, showing me your heart, and I need to tell you something as well. When I first saw you on the yacht, I was in complete shock.”

I flinch. ‘Shock’ is a kind way to put it. I was an utter ass to her.

I swear she can read my mind, as she always could, because her lips turn up in a half smile.

“But as the days wore on,” she continues, “I realized you didn’t know what had happened to me. By some miracle, you hadn’t recognized me from the news. And that’s when it hit me: Finally, here was someone who wasn’t walking on eggshells around me.” I try to breathe. I can’t. I grab my chest, trying to hold my heart together. “You were rude to me—rude. Do you know the last time someone was rude to me? It was before the police came the day Solo—the day that monster died. Over four years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I choke out.

“The person that had been rude to me all these years ago was also you, by the way,” she smiles in this new, sad way that I absolutely hate. “There was no one else.”

I will ignore that.

“I’m sorry for how rude I was,” I choke out. “You have no idea how sorry. It—it was a self-preservation instinct, because I still had feelings for you, and I’m so, so damn sorry for it,” I say.

“I mean, sure, it made me mad, but after everything I have gone through, mad felt ok,” she replies. “Maybe it felt good. It felt alive, you know?”

I hung my head. No, I do not know, and I never will be able to fathom the depths of darkness she has been through.

“Eden.” I sound absolutely shattered. Iamabsolutely shattered.

“But you were real with me.” Her eyes are shining with tears, her lips trembling. The need to press my lips against them, to taste the saltness and the sweetness is so overwhelming I get dizzy. “You treated me like a person would,” she says.

“A horrible person.”

“A horrible person,” she agrees, “but a person nonetheless.”

“Eden, the things I did to you, I can’t forgive myself—” I am choking again.

“You made me dive into the ocean, when I was too scared to do it by myself,” she says. “You let me hang out with your friends. Imade new friends.” I think of Jude, and the familiar wave of rage surges again.Stop it. Jude was there for her when you were a jerk to her.But I can’t stop. “You don’t know what you did for me, Isaiah, you… you made me want to wake up in the morning.” I’m all out of words. I just gape at her. “Did you know I had never done these things before you? You gave me this. You did this. You always do this: You make me come alive. No matter what happens, I don’t… I don’t want you standing there, beating yourself up because you didn’t know the truth.”

“Eden, there is no excuse for what I did, for how I acted—”

“I can’t stand it,” she interrupts me, “the torture in your eyes whenever you look at me now. Now that you know. The pity. I’d rather never see you again than have you look at me this way.”

I’m already shaking my head, but she doesn’t seem to get it.

Pity? She thinks the torture in my eyes is because ofpity? God, she couldn’t be more wrong if she tried. It’s torture all right, but pity is the furthest thing from my mind.

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