Page 81 of Quietly Falling
All because of me.
Tom had been right.
It’s a huge win but it’s bittersweet, the celebration alongside the agony held within the memories. The feelings wiping away the sanctuary I’d found with Ella, a false sense of safety that would never truly be mine.
Would it ever end?
Unread messages bearing her name mock me as I grip the steering wheel and pray for clarity.
For guidance.
For the hope that I deserve her patience and grace when I’ve never been able to grant it to myself.
You still have it; she’s waiting for you.
She cares about you.
But none of those things are the responding voice in my mind as my shaking hands turn the key in the ignition.
It’s onlyhis voice.
Like it is every time I fall down this rabbit hole. The man who haunts my dreams and now my waking hours as he waits for his second trial. The man who tried to lure me into the darkness.
Who willed me to become something unrecognizable from the boy who’d been placed on his doorstep.
I squeeze my eyelids shut and will the memories away.
My chest aches and I rub my fist against the spot where her name is printed on my skin, the girl who should be my only fucking priority.
The one who deserved happiness and a life free from the horrors of this world.
Of Daryl’s world.
The girl I couldn’t protect.
The one who never had a chance to live.
It’s too much.
Without thinking, I dial Mason’s number and put it on speaker, letting my eyelids fall closed as I wait for him to answer.
“Hey, man, are you all right?”
“How do you do it?” I ask, unable to articulate all thatitentails.
“Do what?”
Instead of answering, I swallow hard, my eyelids still squeezed shut. “I had no idea…”
“You were fuckingten,Bodhi. Ten. You were a kid. Nothing that happened in that house is on you,” he says, not needing the details but still knowing exactly what to say.
But I didn’t stop it.
“I know, but it doesn’t make it any easier.”
“But now that you’ve heard her story? Do you think she should let that weigh her down for the rest of her life? Should that be the defining moment in her life?”
“No.”
