Page 148 of Haunt Me

“For what?”

I close my eyes. “I am in love with you, Eden. I have been in love with you since the moment I…”

When I open them, she is already turning her back on me, ready to bolt. I stop talking and grab her wrist to keep her with me.

“It’s ok, I’ll stop,” I whisper. “I’ll stop, it’s ok.” She stops trying to escape, but I still hold on to her until she quietens. “Tell me,” I ask her brokenly, “tell me we will be all right. That’s all I need in order to be able to wait. Tell me we are not broken. Just that. I can’t… I don’t think I would stay sane through it again. Through another bunch of months or years of fighting to survive without knowing if everything is lost.”

“No fighting,” Eden replies. Her hand is trembling in mine, but she still has her back to me. “Not any more. You have suffered long enough. This needs to be over.”

I stop breathing.

“Over?”

She nods, freeing her hand. Just stands there, her back to me. A sob rises in my chest and my vision goes blurry.

“No!” I scream it quietly. Just. No. “Eden.”

Slowly, she turns to face me, and the expression on her face is jarring. Despite everything I’ve gone through since losing her, nothing compares to the icy dread twisting in my stomach right now. It’s as if I am dying while still being alive. Being turned into a ghost in front of her eyes, haunting her bedroom.

“This is killing me, Eden.”

“It’s killing me as well,” she replies. “Do you remember asking me to haunt you? Well, only dead people haunt.”

I grab her by the waist so fiercely her body slams into mine. I didn’t mean to do it with such force, but as her skin melds into mine, fierce energy electrifies my veins, waking me up.

Making me want to fight for her. This girl. My girl.

“Don’t ever say that about yourself!” I whisper fiercely, holding her trembling body between my hands. I can feel her chest moving rapidly, her breaths coming short. We are so close I can almost taste her. “Don’t you ever say that, do you hear?”

She nods, her eyes on my lips.

Is it too late to believe in God?Because I think I might need saving after all. I don’t think I will survive leaving this house. Not like this.

“Don’t—don’t break my heart, Eden. Please. Don’t end it.”

“Don’t break itagain, you mean.” Her eyes have that same dead look in them; the one from six years ago. The empty stare I had thought I had chased away for good is back. “It’s what I do. I run away. I am the heartbreaker, after all.”

My chest hurts. So she hasn’t forgiven me, after all. And how could she? I wouldn’t forgive me.

I let go of her, lowering my head. I can’t bring myself to look at her again.

“I can’t live like this,” she says. “I can’t keep hurting you. It hurts too much.”

It is on the tip of my tongue to completely humiliate myself and blurt out: ‘hurt me then, I don’t care!’ like a complete idiot, but I suddenly understand what she’s been trying to tell me all this time. She is hurting, and my being here isn’t helping. If I thought it did, even in the slightest, I wouldn’t leave, no matter what. But I’m only making it worse by being here.

I can see that now.

I just hope that it’s just for now. That it won’t always be like this for us. We can’t have been destroyed forever. Right?Right?

“Do you want to stop writing songs with me?” I ask her in a small voice and she shakes her head.

“I’m not coming back with you on the tour, Isaiah. It… it hurts too much.”

“I know. But we can still write together, we can—”

She looks down. “I can’t write with you and not…”

“Not what, baby?”

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