Page 130 of A Smile Full of Lies
“You think I could ever walk away from you after what you did for me?”
She didn’t speak. Just stared up at me like I might disappear if she blinked.
I leaned in, pressing my forehead gently to hers.
“You love me,” I whispered.
She nodded.
“And you bled for it.”
I held her hand like it was a lifeline. Because it was. Becauseshewas everything to me.
She’d said she loved me, and now everything inside me was just…noise. Static. Shattered glass and static. A whole lifetime of grief unraveling at the seams.
I couldn’t look at her without seeing blood.
Couldn’t hear her voice without remembering thesilencebetween the nurses’ rounds. Without picturing her pale and still, lips blue, soaked in red. And fuck, I almost lost her.
“I don’t deserve you,” I said. My voice was so broken it was barely a voice anymore.
She blinked at me, dazed from pain meds but still sharp where it counted.
“Yes, you do.”
My jaw clenched so tight my teeth ached, and I shook my head.
“Knox,” she whispered.
I couldn’t stop it. It hit me like a fucking freight train.
My chest folded inward and I dropped my head to her stomach — carefully, so carefully, mindful of the bandages — and the first sob tore out of me before I could lock it down.
Fuck.
I hadn’t cried in years. Not for my parents. Not for my sister. Not even when I stood in front of three goddamn coffins and tried to give a eulogy with a throat made of barbed wire.
But now?
Now I was shaking against the woman I loved, and the tears came like they’d been waiting for this moment all along.
“You weren’t supposed to get hurt,” I rasped. “I would’ve taken the knife. I would’ve burned the whole fucking world down before I let you bleed like that.”
Her hand slid through my hair, the movement slow and shaky.
“Please,” she whispered, “don’t hate me.”
I looked up at her, eyes burning.
“Hate you?” My voice cracked. “Rosalind, I think you might be the only fucking thing keeping me alive.”
“How could you not hate me? I betrayed you.”
“You scared the shit out of me. There’s a difference.”
My voice was low, raw, barely more than a whisper, but her eyes fluttered open and locked on mine like I’d shouted it.
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t apologize. And I think that hurt worse than anything.
