Page 69 of Brutal Alpha Beast
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. The wind rustles through the trees around us. There were so manygoodthings.
I feel them in my body. They’ve lived there along with all the bad things, all the trauma, and the pain. Even when I forced everything from my mind, the memories never truly went away.
I want to cry. It feels like my stomach is caving in on itself, a sharp pain that precedes a sharp pressure in the back of my eyes.
“You broke my heart,” I say quietly.
My words carry in the space between us, raw, ugly, and vulnerable. True.
Maybe Ellis and I coming together is too frantic, too messy, too much.
I try holding back the tears, but my eyes water anyway. I fight to hold back cries. I fear that I’ll unravel completely before him.
And who gave me the right? I understand how wrong it was to take his memories away.
His face is washed with guilt.
“I didn’t mean to do what I did. I’m sorry,” he sighs. “Things never should have turned out this way.”
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“Sort of a worst-case scenario, right?”
I scoff a little, almost laugh, and delicately wipe the dripping tears from my eyes.
“Yeah, you can say that again.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing, Danielle,” he says. A cooler breeze blows through his copper hair as he speaks. My emotions are storming through me, contradictory and almost unbearable. I feel close to the point of becoming numb. “I wasyoung, stupid. I hope you can recognize that I’m not the same guy. It was so long ago.”
I nod. “Yes, it was.”
Somehow, though, it only feels like yesterday that I was running away from him in our secret spot.
“And before all that, we were friends.”
I can tell that Ellis is trying to work through the old memories, to make sense of them all. To figure out where we stand today.
But it’s too difficult for me to stand in front of him as he does it. It’s too hard to be reminded of everything all at once.
“Look, Ellis,” I begin.
“You want to go?”
I nod, my face twisting a little with sadness. Looking into his eyes is like a drug, but I have my pain, my sadness, and my shame pulling me away.
“Please,” I say. “I need to go.”
He nods, and the look on his face makes my heart break.
Ellis steps back, just slightly, giving me space. His eyes flicker, dimmed with a mixture of guilt and understanding.
“I’ll walk you back,” he says, quiet but steady.
“No,” I say. “I’ll go alone.”
As I walk off, I feel his eyes on my back.
He doesn’t try to stop me, and I’m relieved. The relief only lasts for a second, though. Once I’m further away, out of his sight line, my inner world collapses.
