Page 101 of The Hate We Breathe
“Juliet.” Lex’s plea captures my attention one last time. There are tears in his eyes and I almost let that stop me. “I don’t care if I die,” he tells me. “But you can’t expect me to watch you do this and live afterwards. I can’t do this without you.”
I never would have thought I’d long to hear those words. How many months ago was it that we were nothing more than enemies?
A year ago, I didn’t even remember him.
I’d forgotten the sad, broken boy that I’d saved. The boy that hadneverforgotten me. He’d kept me in his heart and loved me even when I’d detested him. He’d grown into the man I adored and fallen in love with along with his best friends. They areeverything.
All that viscous, disgusting hatred I’d breathed in around me seeped into my lungs and I’d come out on the other side full of a cancer that only the three of them had managed to cure me of.
Him. Nolan. Gio. Me. I don’t know whether I should feel relieved that the others aren’t here to witness this last act of love for them or not.
I bite my lip until I can taste blood in my mouth. My vision blurs as emotion stings the backs of my eyes, and I manage to hold in all but one tear. It slides down my cheek as I stare back at Lex. My beautiful monster. I smile at him and he shakes his head.
“God, don’t fucking smile at me when you do it,” he says. “Don’t leave me like that, Juliet. You fucking bitch—donotleave me with that image.”
I almost laugh at his comment. He’s right. Iama bitch. This is cruel, and yet, I have to do it. There’s no choice because thatchoice was made the second I decided to trust them, to love them, to put them first.
I’d once thought myself incapable of loving someone the way I wanted to be loved myself. Now, I realize that our love is rare because it’s dangerous. It’s blood and violence. Our love walks the tightline between obsession and insanity.
“It’s going to be okay,” I tell Lex because I have to. I need to give him a hint that this will work.
I’ve got a plan. A crazy, fucked-up, insane plan. One that—if it doesn’t work—I’ll die in the most gruesome, painful, suffering manner there is, with my bones shattered in a million places, bleeding out as the hormonal teenage shitheads that have made my life hell scream and act like it’stheirworld ending and not mine.
“For what it’s worth,” I tell him. “I love you, too.”
I turn away from the sight of him and face the city. Lights dance in the background. The sound of music and cars is a low buzz in the air. I take it all in and as I do, something tremendous slams into my mind.
Madness isn’t doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Madness is something else entirely. It’s obsession and broken pasts coming together to form a future that you know you’ll never be a part of.
I close my eyes and realize that I can't breathe.
There's no oxygen in my lungs, yet it lingers all around me, unwilling to give me a taste. As if even the air in Silverwood hates my fucking guts. It wouldn't surprise me if it did.
I’m fucking insane. Because even choking on nothingness doesn’t stop the smile from spreading over my face.
Nothing surprises me anymore.
"Well?" That voice holds no pity. "What's your choice? You… or him?"
Really, she should be asking—me or them?
And isn't that the question? That's always been the question. For the last several months, I've been asking myself that same thing over and over again.
Me or them? Me or them? Me… orthem?
I didn't know until this moment. I never would have guessed what my answer would finally be. Now that we're here, though, I can't see how I would have made any other choice.
It's them. It was always going to be them and it will always be them.
My lips part. I inhale, but there's still no air.
Fuck. It's not like I'll need to breathe for much longer anyway if I can’t pull this off.
Life as I know it is over.
I'm done.
Finished.
