Page 62 of Breathe You (Breathe Duet 2)

They need me too much.

Carter, for as much as he has dealt with this type of circumstance, isn’t equipped to give out hope. Quaid is breaking at the seams, and Val is succumbing to her numbness. One of us needs to have his shit together to weather through this storm and pull them out of their misery. I need to be that guy for them all. I need to take care and protect them. That’s what Valentina’s dad would do.

I look up at the heavens and hope he’s looking down on us, then do something I haven’t done since I was little and Dad left us on one of his many tours of duty.

I pray.

“Please,” I begin. “Give me an ounce of your strength and goodness. If I can become half the man you are, then I promise you, I will take care of them. With every fiber of my being, I promise I’ll be the man to keep our family together.”

Carter

It’s been two weeks since the funeral, and each day since then, Valentina seems to draw back further into herself. I sit on her windowsill, looking at her shrunk up form lying on her bed. She just keeps staring at the white wall in front of her, as if it holds all the answers to her sorrows, refusing to ease her pain.

I hear the front door close from downstairs and turn my head to the window to see Logan and Quaid leaving the house. Quaid’s been quiet all throughout this, too. I needed his humor and life to keep the monsters of the past at bay, but he’s just as dead inside as Valentina is. I watch them get into Quaid’s car, Logan taking the driver’s seat since Quaid is in no frame of mind to be behind the wheel. Logan probably used the excuse to go to the grocery store, just to get Quaid out of the house. If he thought that trick would have worked on Valentina too, I’m sure he’d have come upstairs to ask.

But Valentina doesn’t get out of the house, she barely leaves her room. There are plenty of things she doesn’t do anymore. Like talk or eat or laugh. She’s become an eerie version of the walking dead, and even though her heart still beats, it’s too broken to function anymore.

“You need a shower,” I tell her, but she doesn’t reply.

“Did you hear me?”

“I don’t want one,” she whispers, and even though her voice is weak and throaty, I’m still happy that at least she was able to string a full sentence together.

For the first week, she didn’t utter one single word to us. To anyone, for that matter.

We’ve stayed over and watched over her, but it hasn’t brought Valentina the comfort I would have wished.

I remember when my parents died. How I wished I would have died with them. All the troubled thoughts Valentina is struggling with, I had rummage through my mind for years. I know this pain by heart. Lived it and bought the fucking T-shirt. But I never expected to be a bystander and watch the girl I love go through this type of pain. I’m not sure what hurts more—the loss or the helplessness.

Fuck this.

“Get up, Valentina,” I order assertively, but to no avail, since she refuses to move a muscle. “I said get up!”

“No! Just leave me alone, Carter!” she yells back, turning her head to throw a hateful look my way.

“Oh, you’re angry at me? Good! Be angry, but at least taking a fucking shower as you do it.”

“Fuck you!” she yells, and a crack of a sinister smile unleashes from me.

Valentina isn’t prone to cursing. She’s never been. But once in a while, it comes out of her. Either by our influence all these years or by sheer anger. This is the latter. Anger I can deal with. It’s her pain that cripples my soul.

I walk over to her and pull back the covers of her bed in one fast swoop.

“Get up, Valentina.”

She rises up on her knees on the bed, her eyes gleaming with hatred.

“I said no!”

“Well I saidyes!” I yell, grabbing her and throwing her over my shoulder.

I feel her fists hit my back as I walk her over to her en suite. She’s still hurling those punches at me as I turn on the showerhead and place her on the floor mat.

“Get in!”

“No!

Another evil smirk tugs on my lips as I pick her up and place us both under the spray of water. Clothes and all.

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