Page 226 of Haunt Me

“You’re breaking me, Eden, no, please, please!” The words are wrenched out of me in a heart-wrenching scream that’s full of anguish. But all I get in response are her retreating footsteps.

“What if being with you takes me back?” she asks. “What if…”

If I try to speak, I will wail.Wail.

Her voice, toneless, defeated, takes me back to those woods, to the day she destroyed me. I am no longer here. In my head, I’m back in the forest, running after her, stumbling around trees blindly, catching myself against branches tangling up in my shoes, folding to my knees, knuckles bruised, bleeding. Losing her.

Inside my head, I’m screaming, like I did then:‘Eden, no! What did I do? Talk to me. Eden, I’m begging you!’

But here, in this room, in reality, no sound comes out of my mouth. My feet don’t move an inch. There’s nowhere to run to. No more questions to be asked.

This is it. It’s over.

“I’m sorry,” Eden keeps saying. She’s crying. “I’m sorry I ruined everything again. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.”

I just can’t stand it anymore.

I walk out while she’s still saying ‘sorry’. I’m waiting for my mouth to say something, anything. It doesn’t.

I close the door behind me, fighting the urge to reduce it to splinters. To walk in and carry her in my arms away from the memories, away from the pain. I hear her break apart on the other side of the door, and I’m already texting Faith:

Call her.

I lean back against the room’s door, waiting for Eden’s crying to stop. I would never have left, not in a million years, not if wild horses were dragging me. But those words she said: ‘What if being with you takes me back?’ shattered me.

And with every passing second, I know it to my core that they’re true.

Being with her takes me back. I’m having constant flashbacks, I keep being dragged back to that place, those wounds, those woods… And if it’s happening to me, it’s happening to her as well. Has been all this time, since she met me on Spencer’s yacht.

What if me coming here was a mistake? What if just me being here is putting a pressure on her she can’t stand?

What if me being with her is making her worse instead of better?

What if I’m the source of all her new nightmares and the dark circles under her eyes? What if I’m the reason she can’t stop remembering?

I am, of course.

I can see it clearly now.

She is trapped in a vicious cycle of memories and flashbacks, because of me. I am a living, breathing memory of her childhood and adolescence. And that will never cease to be the case.

I hung my head.New York was a dream, after all.

Now, in the real world, all my presence is doing to Eden is taking her back to that monster’s house. Back into the abyss of her memories. She can’t handle this. Us. Not yet. Not ever. I wait for her sobs to subside a little, and then I hear her phone buzz through the door.

“Fee?” she says and her voice cracks.

Faith has called her. She’ll take over now.

The next second, I’m gone. I run down the hallway and out the main door. I texted my driver and he’s already waiting outside.

I break apart the second I’m in the car.

…

Everything is darkness.

I go through the motions of the next show, and the next, but I just can’t stand it. I can’t stand existing. It’s like I need to get out of my skin, but I have a performance every single night, and I have to keep going. I don’t know how.

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