Page 24 of My Sweetest Obsession
I’ve spent countless hours since the night I finally confessed everything to Ivy trying to figure out a way to tell her how sorry I am without inserting myself back into her life when I know I’m not wanted there. But there are no words that can accomplish that, if she’d even hear them.
The only thing I can do is continue sending her favorite meals to the house every day, even if it’s woefully inadequate to express everything I feel toward her and this horrible situation I’ve forced us into, and she’s likely throwing them away…
I’ll keep doing it until she tells me to stop.
Maybe some part of me is hoping she will because then she’d at least be talking to me, even if it is to scream and rant and tell me to leave her the fuck alone forever. It would be better than the reality I’ve been living—or, more accurately, barely surviving—in since she walked out my door that night.
Because this silence is deafening.
I hadn’t realized how much I’ve come to rely on having her around and in my life, on being able to ride over to her house and let myself in when I needed to be surrounded by her and Drew, when I needed to see her, to sit and talk, or just listen. And the longer we go without speaking, the harder it becomes to stop myself from going there, not merely to check on her and make sure she hasn’t returned to that dark place I found her in—or worse—but to throw myself at her feet and beg for the forgiveness I know she can’t and won’t give me.
How could she?
I still don’t understand how Mom sits across from me when we meet for coffee or lunch, knowing I’m the cause of all her pain. Those eyes of hers that I know match Drew’s and mine, even if I can’t see the color anymore, somehow still hold the same affection they always have, as if everything I’ve done hasn’t changed anything for her. And none of that makes sense to me.
Maybe it’s true what people say about having children—that there’s literally nothing they can do that can change the way you love them.
But that isn’t true for Ivy.
The moment she knew the full truth, I watched her eyes shutter, and a wall built up around whatever might be left of her heart that will never fall when it comes to me.
I got everything I wanted for a fleeting moment, and even though it was tainted by what I did and lost to get there, it’s the only thing keeping me moving forward at the moment. The only thing keeping me sane besides my meetings, my time with Mom, and the fact that at least I’m finally able to put paint on canvas again.
After weeks of nothing, at least I’m expressing something.
Only it isn’t Ivy anymore.
Every time I’ve brought out a new canvas since I met with Roxy, a different face has appeared.
One that I look at every day, yet it isn’t mine.
Finally revealing the truth to Ivy and Mom somehow turned my guilt into something physical.
I didn’t understand why I couldn’t paint anything for so long, but after sitting in front of Prometheus that day, it became clear that my subconscious had been trying to get me to put something I didn’t want to see on the canvas.
That’s why I couldn’t put paint on canvas or anywhere else. It wasn’t just not wanting to see Ivy in her anguish; it was because I didn’t want to see him.
Drew…
The literal other half of me.
The person who was always at my side and always had my back.
The only one who ever really understood me and never tried to change what I was, embracing all my quirks and darkness that clashed so much with the light and warmth that always seemed to radiate from him.
He was my rock.
And instead of telling him that, instead of celebrating his joy at finding Ivy and having her in his life, I tried to take her and destroyed them both in the process.
I will never be able to make up for what I did to Ivy. I will never be able to make things right with her. But at least she’s still here. And I will spend every minute of every day until I draw my last breath trying to find a way.
But he’s gone.
There is no apologizing to him.
There is no opportunity to supplicate myself and beg for him to allow me to take it all back like I had intended to that night after he drove away.
It’s too late, and that’s what I knew but never wanted to face fully until I sat there with Roxy and really looked at Prometheus.
