Page 225 of Haunt Me

I want to smash something. I want this whole day to stop, to get it started all over from the beginning. To make different choices, ones that would not lead us to this moment.

“No,” she says simply.

“So you are not ok with me trying to give you the world?” I ask her.

“Not as a means of making me better. Not if you… not if so much depends upon it.” She sighs. “I can’t do this.”

I freeze. My eyes are closed; I refuse to believe this is happening. It’s a dream—a nightmare.Kill me, I think.It will hurt less.

“I can’t do this, Isaiah,” she keeps repeating it. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t stand it.” She is fighting for breath. I take her arm to make her look at me; she doesn’t.

“What do you mean? You can’t be with me?”

“I can’t keep hurting you. The guilt is crushing me. The weight I’m putting on you. This needs to stop. I am going to lose my mind. Or you will.”

“I don’t mind losing my mind over you.” I mean it, too.

She laughs bitterly. “Don’t you see? You’ll let me do anything to you. That’s not right. It’s not fair.”

“It’s not fair what happened to you either, Eden!” I scream. Then I lower my voice. What is the point anyway? “I just… I just love you.”

She’s quiet for a bit, letting my words hang between us.

The unspoken words also hang between us: Is it enough? Is my loving her enough? Is it enough to save us both? What if it isn’t?

“It’s happening all over again,” Eden says quietly. “I’m breaking.”

“We’ll fight it together,” I say. “I’m right here. Look at me.”

“I can’t look at you, I’m too ashamed.”

“Not of me, you aren’t.” But she is; I can see she is. My breath hitches.

“What if they’re right, the doctors? What if I can’t love? What if he trained me to be too submissive, too… What if I don’t have enough of a mind of my own, enough of a heart of my own, to ever be brave enough to love you as you deserve?”

I close my hands around her arms and pull her closer to me.

“You are nothing but heart, Eden. You are the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

“I don’t see it,” she replies. “What if I can never see it? It’s not fair to you, to spend your life trying to put me back together. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…”

“I am not a horse, baby.” I try to joke, but inside I’m breaking. I’m crying and I don’t want to let her see.

Please laugh with me, Eden. Please come back to me, baby.

Suddenly, I remember pushing my hands against her chest that day she fainted in the woods, years ago. I remember pleading, begging her to come back to me. I remember fighting for her every breath.

Then I remember how I drove to get to her on that highway, how I violated every traffic rule that existed, and some that haven’t been invented yet, just to get to her. How demented I was, how desperate.

This is worse.

I feel even more scared now than I did both those times, but I won’t give up. I’ll fight like I fought then, and even harder.

“No,” she shakes her head. “You are the king.” My head snaps up. “You are the fairytale prince. You are everything, Isaiah. But even you might not be enough.”

“You know it’s not true. You know it.”

“I don’t know it.”

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