Page 122 of Worth Every Risk

I love you.

Aries.

I cover my eyes with my hand for a second. My breath shakes and bone-crushing pain shudders in my chest.Fuck. Thishurts. It hurts worse than divorce. Pressure shimmers behind my eyes, pulses in my throat.

I scrunch up Aries’ note, feeling the edges of the card biting into my palm, then stuff it deep into my pocket. Behind my ribs, there’s a splintering sensation as if part of me is shattering. I don’t cry. I never fucking cry, but right now I know I could. Unshed tears burn like acid at the back of my eyeballs.

Fuck this shit.I can’t sit in here, wishing she was still here, wondering how the fuck it all went wrong.

I push off the bed and walk out of the room, closing the door behind me. An attempt to shut it all away. To shutheraway. A chuckle, entirely devoid of humour, escapes me; as if I could ever shut her away.

You’re in my bloodstream.

I go to my own room, but memories of Aries are even worse here. I see her everywhere, ghosts of her against the cupboards,splayed on the bed, smiling, laughing. Images of red hair strewn across my sheets are superimposed over the emptiness beneath.

I sink to the floor, dropping my head into my hands, bracing to hold back the pain I know is right there, knocking at the edges of my awareness, but I refuse to let it in. This will not be the thing that breaks me.

Not yet…

36

ARIES

Icould hardly breathe in the taxi. In the airport, I sat in a café on a high stool with a takeout cup of shitty tea on the bar next to me. I couldn’t even begin to drink it because I was crying so much that I was almost hyperventilating.

Now, back home, I’m numb as I unlock the front door. The familiar white PVC, thick frosted glass in the upper half, is so different from Matt’s glamorous house. World’s apart. Lifetimes.

The thought breaks my heart afresh.He’s so far away.

I step inside, toeing off my shoes, feet sinking onto the threadbare carpet with its swirling paisley patterns. I bet Matt had never even seen a carpet that looks like this before he came here.

An electric oil diffuser on the hall table bubbles away, changing colour like the lights in a cheap disco, scented air spilling out in clouds. Around it are large tower crystals that Mum has set out in a circle, selenite, rose quartz, citrine and amethyst.

I quietly lower my suitcase to the floor so as not to wake Mum if she’s asleep. Matt hovers in my mind’s eye as I replay memories of him being here, dominating the house. Lowering his head on the way up the stairs, leaning against the doorframe and offering us all tea…

I loved that he brought me here and wanted to meet my mum, but now I wish he’d never come because I can’t get rid of his image hanging over the space, an eerie hologram haunting my mind.

“Lizzie?” comes my mother’s voice.

“It’s me.”

“Aries?”

I don’t answer. Instead, I walk into the sitting room. The sight pains me. Tubes. A ventilator. Oxygen tank. There’s no scent of incense in here because the diffuser from the hall doesn’t penetrate this far. Instead, it smells sour, like death is seeping out of the walls.

Mum is couched on the bed, the duvet pulled up, two frail arms lying atop. Her skin is waxy, like she’s already dead. Cheeks hollow, lips thin and cracked. She didn’t tell me it was this bad. I didn’t know.She got so much worse, so fast.My knees weaken and my hand reaches out for the wall, fingertips pressing into unyielding plaster.

I want to yell at her, to scream at her for not telling me how bad it had got, but all I say is, “Hi, Mum.” My voice is timid, and the large, sorrowful eyes Mum turns on me tell me she’s reading every thought that passes through my mind.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” she whispers, and although she looks like she’s about to cry, it’s me who sobs. The sound splits through me, dragging a pain behind it like a knife being drawn through my flesh from hip to shoulder. I cover my mouth with one hand, stifling anything else that might leak out.

“I’m sorry,” she croaks. “I wanted you to enjoy London.” And by London, I know she doesn’t just mean the city. She means Matt and everything he meant to me, and my heart rips clean in two. I press my hands against my chest as though that might keep it together, but it makes no difference.

She lifts a hand from the floral bedspread, her frail, withered fingers reaching out. She glances beyond me, as if she expects to see Matt.

“Aries, honey,” she says. “Are you alone?”

I force a smile onto my face, but it’s so difficult to perform it wouldn’t convince anyone, least of all Mum. “I am.”

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