Page 187 of Perfect
He’s exactly the same person, but he’s finally being honest with me.
None of this is what I expected from him, and I sit there trying hard to hide my shock as he apologizes for hurting me and flatly refuses to apologize for anything else. He seems so devastated, so fucking resigned to the fact that he’s lost me, but he doesn’t beg, or plead, or manipulate – he just accepts it. When he tells me he just wants me to be happy, I know it’s the truth.
My heart breaks for a fraction of a second as he lets me go, but when I realize what it means, my breath catches as my heart lodges itself in my throat. All the hope I’ve been shoving down and pushing away leading up to stepping into this room breaks free and floods back into me.
I’ve spent the last two months thinking Theo couldn’t put what I need above what he wants, and maybe he wasn’t able to before, but he can now. I thought he’d saved my life for himself, so he couldkeepme, but now I’m realizing he might have done it purely for my sake.
Something fundamental has changed between us, because something’s changed withhim.
I didn’t know he could love me like this.
I try to keep a grasp on my anger, on the betrayal and the heartbreak, but a deep pang of longing cuts through all of it.
Theo looks so completely devastated and hopeless, and for a second, I’m back on that bed with him standing over me, covered in blood and begging me to wake up. Something warm and soft and aching flows through me, and I let myself truly feel it for the first time in months as I watch him sit there and give me that look like he’s memorizing me.
FuckingTheo.
I remind myself that it’s entirely my choice what happens. I’ve got all the control now, and I could walk out and leave him for good. I could scream at him and insult him and force him to feel all the pain I’m feeling, and then I could testify against him, just to spite him.
Or I could forgive him.
I could have him back.
He stares at me with his teary, bright hazel eyes, leaning slightly forward across the table as if drawn to me, and I hear my dad’s voice run through my head for what feels like the millionth time.
“Alice,there’s no such thing as a second or third chance when you truly love somebody – there’s only another chance.”
I could give Theo another chance. I think hedeservesanother chance. I don’t have to give him one, and I probably shouldn’t, but I want to so fucking badly.
I have spent months trying to talk myself out of loving him, but nothing has worked. No matter how hard I’ve tried to convince myself that I hate him, all the anger and heartbreak haven’t made the slightest dent in my feelings for him. I curl up in bed alone every night, afraid to go to sleep and desperately missing Theo’s arms around me, and whenever I wake up from a nightmare, I reach for him.
I walked in here assuming that he’d lie and try to manipulate me and break my heart all over again, that I’d have to walk away from him for good, but that’s not what’s happening. Instead, he’s finally giving me the option to love him, and he’s not eventryingto.
I think some of that therapy got through to him, even if he’d never admit it.
I want to make the right choice, but I don’t know if there is one. I think I just have to choose if I want Theo exactly as he is. He’s so sweet, and thoughtful, and gentle, and insecure, and wonderful. He’s so desperately, pathetically in love with me that he’ll do anything for me, even if it means growing as a person. He’s also kind of insane, andterrifying, and manipulative, and deeply damaged, and my fuckingstalker, but choosing him means choosing all of him.
I know he’smine,whether I want him or not.
Fuck it, I want him.
I was alwaysgoing to choose him if he gave me the option, and he just did. I have no reason to trust him, but I’m going to anyway.
I can’t tell if I’m insane or if I’m making the best choice of my life, but I think it’s possible that both are true. I almost laugh at how ridiculous it all is.
“You’re a fuckingasshole,you know that?” The corner of Theo’s mouth rises slightly in a small, crooked smile, and my stomach flips.
“You just figured that out?”
God, I missed him so much.
For one brief moment, everything feels impossibly good between us, and then all the pain and rage floods back into me, and I remember precisely how fucking angry I am with him.
“No,Theodore,” I snap, “I figured it out when the doctors pulled a fucking tracker out of me.” Theo flinches slightly, andI let my anger get the better of me and start tearing into him, watching him grow paler and wider-eyed the more I speak. When I tell him he broke my heart, he seems to implode, leaving him looking completely hopeless and empty.
I’ve seen him look at me like that before, and the rest of the words die on my tongue.
“Please just try to remember that I loved you, okay?” Panic and concern race through me at the quiet, hollow sound of his voice. I think about the thick letter perched on the bag of my things, the envelopes on his desk, the fridge with no food. I’m almost positive he was planning on killing himself if I didn’t give him a second chance, and he’s probably much more suicidal right now than he was then.
