Page 68 of Bound By Threads
She doesn’t answer, but I feel her tense.
“I thought I was seeing things at first. You were just a shadow, and I watched as you stepped back and jumped.” My voice falters. I swallow hard, fighting the lump in my throat. “I didn’t even think. I just ran. You hit the water, and I swore I stopped breathing. I told myself you’d surface…” I pause. “You didn’t come up.”
The wind kicks up a little, brushing her hair into her face. She doesn’t move it, she just stares at me. Unable to handle not touching her anymore, I reach across and brush it out of her face, with a tenderness I’ve only ever saved for her. “I dove in after you. It was freezing. My chest locked up from the cold, but I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t breathe or think as I saw you sinking. Limp. Like you’d given up and wanted it to end.”
I drag a hand over my face. “I got to you in time. Barely. Hauled you out, did CPR… and then when your eyes open, when you took that gasping breath of air, I swear to god, I’ve never felt that kind of relief before. But all I could think about was that the gorgeous girl I was holding in my arms, who I just saved, wanted to die, and it was like something lit up inside of me.”
I turn my head and look at her. Her eyes are glassy, jaw tight, like she’s fighting herself not to cry. “I’m sorry…” she rasps, but I shake my head, determined to continue.
“That night never left me,” I say softly. “Every time I was deployed, you were there in the back of my head. I’d see your face under the water, your lips blue. I’d wake up drenched in sweat, thinking you were gone, and I wasn’t there to save you this time…” I gulp. “It always felt so real.”
She presses a hand to her mouth.
“I tried to focus. To stay sharp, because out there, it means life or death, but the darker everything got, the darker my thoughts got. You ever wonder what the darkness in me is, Lottie?” I tap my chest with my fist. “It’s not bullets or blood. It’s that goddamn night that I saved you and lost someone I considered a brother. The fear that one day, I won’t be fast enough to save you, and I’ll fail you just like I did him. That I’ll lose you before I ever had a chance to make you mine.”
She shakes her head slowly. “Archer…”
“I know we fought,” I say, cutting her off, but I know if I don’t say it now, I never will. “About the stripping. I shouldn’t have hauled you out of there like some caveman… It just all became too much, and all I could think about was the pain in your eyes. It tore me up.”
My heart’s pounding, but I try to stay calm. I sink my hands into the sand beside hers. She’s still hurting, and it makes me ache knowing I caused it.
“It hurts, Archer,” she says quietly, her voice shaking like a thread ready to snap.
“I know it does, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I caused it.”
“It’s not justwhat you did.” Lottie swallows hard, her hands trembling as she looks out at the ocean. I can see the way everything’s affected her as she tries to keep the walls she’s built to protect herself intact. I worry that she’s going to slip back into the silence she used to protect herself, but she doesn’t.
Instead, she looks at me, her voice barely above a whisper. “I…” she chokes, “I don’t remember everything from before. It’s like the memories are locked away. I remember the pain. His voice, but there’s something niggling at me and I can’t figure it out.”
My chest tightens. I want to reach for her, pull her into me, but I know she needs to get this out.
“I told them half-truths about my parents. The parts I thought I could handle.” Her voice wavers. “I didn’t want to tell them the real story because, as much as they’ve hurt me, I couldn’t do that to them. I couldn’t let them see what I really went through.” She bites her lips, her eyes filled with pain. “Because the more I remember, the more it hurts, and everything I tried to escape is clawing its way back, and I want nothing more than to be back on the edge of that cliff.”
Her words cut through me like a knife, and I can’t help the way my throat tightens. I reach for her then, grasping her hand so tightly in mine to really assure myself she’s still here. A flash of anger surges through me, knowing that it’s because they’re back that she’s suffering.
They’ve cornered her, violated her, pushing her when they don’t deserve any of the answers they are trying to demand from her—it burns through me like fire.
“Sometimes, pain shows that you’re still alive. That you’re still here with a beating heart that’s purer than most.” I try to reason with her, hating that this is how she feels.
She shakes her head, her lips trembling.
“I don’t like it when it hurts, Archer. All I’ve ever known is pain. I wanted to start fresh, and now they are here, dragging everything up again. Why would I want to keep hurting?”
I can feel my heart shattering. It’s hard to look at her like this, because I want to fix everything. But I can’t.
“Because one day it won’t hurt,” I say, the words slipping out before I can stop them. “The pain will fade, and you’ll realize that the betrayal and hurt won’t define you anymore… I’m going to make you so happy that you’ll look back and wonder what it felt like to hurt so much.”
She looks at me, searching my face like she’s trying to see if I’m being truthful. “How can you be so sure?”
I move closer to her, lifting a hand to gently cup her cheek, my thumb brushing over her skin. “Because I would cut out my heart and sell my soul to Lucifer himself to make sure that all you ever know from this moment on is peace. Let me make you happy, Lottie.”
She lets out a shaky breath, and I swallow hard. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry for how I treated you. I’m sorry for hauling you out of there when I found out about the stripping. I acted out of fear… or anger, I’m not sure, but I know I shouldn’t have done it.”
Her brown eyes flicker, and for a brief moment, I can see the hurt in them, raw and exposed. “It hurts that you treated me like that.”
I want to say more to explain myself, but the truth is I don’t have the words for this. “I know. I can’t take it back, and I regret it. I should’ve treated you with respect and spoken to you instead of letting my emotions control me.”
She smiles at me, and I swear my heart thumps heavier in my chest.
