Page 16 of I Promise You
“He can’t hurt you anymore.Theycan’t hurt you anymore. As long as I’m around, no one will hurt you again, I promise you.”
I’m still staring at his chest, but I finally meet his blue eyes. Those beautiful light blue irises I could get lost in forever. Danny makes me feel safealways. My panic attack slowly fades away as he holds me in his arms, and I let all the events settle into my foggy brain. I thought I had died because I swear I saw my brother so vividly. His guitar playing our favorite song.
“I saw Paul,” I mumble.
“You saw Paul?” Danny asks.
The beeping on the monitor speeds up, along with the beat of my heart.
“I saw him. He was playing his guitar,” I breathe out as I search for any reaction from Danny…but nothing. He’s not giving me anything. But when I stare at his eyes longer, I have another flashback. A flashback of what I last saw before I went drowning in pure black shadows.
His eyes transformed to black. The Grim Reaper tattoo he had on his body spoke in a demonic voice that sent shivers down my spine.
I break away from his gaze, afraid of the hallucination.Afraid of Danny.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing…I just—"
Should I tell him what I saw?
Will he think I’m crazy?
“I just don’t know how I’m alive,” I confess. It’s the truth, not the entire truth.
“It doesn’t matter, baby. Look at me.”
I tilt my head upward, tears escaping me again, and I wonder when I’ll ever stop fucking crying.
He shakes his head, wiping them away with his hand. “You’re still here. You’re alive and you’re not going anywhere. I’ve got you, Ari.” I purse my lips and I watch his eyebrows pinch together as he declares himself to me. “I’ve got you for the rest of my life. I’m not going anywhere. I promise you.”
4
ARI
I’m staring at the food my mother just prepared while the sounds of spoons colliding with plates are the only thing that fills the tension in the room.
It’s one of my favorite dishes tonight. My mom made it, hoping it would get me to eat.
Albondigas.
Meatball soup with red rice and potatoes.
All I can do is stare at the reddish soup, watching the heat seep into the air above from how freshly cooked it is. It smells incredibly appetizing, but the misery I feel stops me from enjoying anything anymore.
I can’t keep my eyes off my plate. My stomach growls, and saliva fills my mouth, but why can’t I move? Why can’t I eat these days or have an appetite?
It’s because…I’m too broken.
My baby should be kicking excitedly as the smell of dinner fills my nostrils. I should feel some signal in my stomach from my baby dancing, eager to eat with kicks against my flesh, but…nothing, and it makes me angry. I tighten my hold on the spoon, staring at the meatballs, unable to blink.
Sometimes, I feel like I have phantom kicks, but then reality sets in, and I want to scream.
We’re in my small dining room area in front of my kitchen. I moved straight into my new home I had applied to before Danny got back home. When I confessed my pregnancy to my mother, I also applied for houses to rent that day.
When I left the hospital, I spent the first few nights at my mother’s house, too afraid to leave her by herself until it was time to move into my small cottage home.
It was time for me to set boundaries with my mother.
