Page 89 of I Promise You
Now, I’ve pushed him too far for the first time, and a part of me regrets it. Maybe I’m being unfair…or maybe I’ve just hit my limit with lies and the horrid events I’ve been through this year.
The words sting, and a lump grows more in my throat. Anger makes my body tremble, and I grow hot as fire blows out of my mouth like a dragon with my words.
“All right, Grim Reaper.” I spit. “Your name fits you perfectly because so much death surrounds you. Everyone around you dies! I will not be a part o-of—” I stutter. “—of this curse that surrounds you.”
Danny’s jaw clenches harder, and I can’t tell if he’s shocked from the different side of me that has unlocked or hurt because my words are getting to him, but I don’t care. For the first time, I don’t care if my anger hurts someone else. I want him to feel what I feel. I want him to be angry with me. I want him to hurt like me.
“Everyone dies around you. I almost did. Our baby died.” I pause and palm my lower stomach where I used to hold our child, taking in a deep breath, before continuing, “Damon.” I didn’t mean to bring up the hostage, but the thoughts keep pouring into wounded words. “My own brother died around you.”
Then he stiffens and looks at me with an incandescent expression that sends chills up my spine, and I almost retreat, drawing back my actions, but my boiling wrath doesn’t let me.
“I lost my baby too!” He points to his chest. “I don’t get to be a father. I didn’t get to know him or know what he would look like. If he was going to have your brown or my blue eyes. If he was going to have your black hair.” His face flickers pools of affliction, his voice roaring with affliction. “I know I said fucked up things to you that one night and that will forever eat me alive.” He drawls, stalking toward me, his steps loud and indignant.
“You’re really blaming me for everything? Don’t you dare act like I’m not a man at the end of the day. I’ve been grieving, too, but I handle my shit differently, Ari. I do my best to save who I can when I’m out there with my team. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no idea what it’s like to watch a body get burned alive.” Each word hits me like a bolt powered by resentment.
“When I told you I was pregnant with our baby, you couldn’t even look at me, Danny.” I sniffle, my voice crescendoing high and breathy as the memories of my announcement in his truck flood me like a hurricane of disappointment. “You crushed me. You broke my heart. You broke my heart over and over again this past year.”
“Yeah...I did. Because all my life, I’ve been this man who couldn’t feel anything unless I was drunk. I did react in such a fucked up way, and I’ll be groveling for the rest of my life at your feet. There is no excuse for my reaction, but there is a reason why I didn’t want children.”
“What is that reason?” I wave my hands, awestruck, then cross them over my chest.
“Do you know what it's like to carry out dismembered children from an explosion from a fucking playground?” He quirks his brows, daring me to answer him.
I flinch, regretting my choice of words.
“To have a child bleed all over you while their parents beg you to save them, knowing damn well it’s too late?” I flinch as he roars. “Children, Ari! Babies! Dead. Because of the level of evil these motherfuckers will go to, and with a smile on their face! Paul made a huge impact on my life, and you know that. I drank myself past dangerous limits all year because of it.” He roars at me with cold, distant eyes. He deepens his tone, and I’m tempted to backpedal this conversation.
But I can’t stop. Words spew out of my mouth like scorching lava, ready to swallow and burn anything in my path.
“All of this did happen because of you. I gave you all of me. Everything.Youcompletely obliterated every moral I held so dear to me.If you hadn’t started a war between you and Shane that night at El Devine, maybe he wouldn’t have tried to kill me. Maybe our baby would still be here. Don’t even get me started on Nora.”
“So, I should have just let that coward abuse you?”
“Why didn’t you? Because of the promise with Paul? That you refused to tell me about?”
“No, Ari, fuck the promise. This is more than that. I will always protect you. Look out for you and your mother because you are everything to me.”
“I could have defended myself. I don’t need your protection. I don’t want it." My voice comes out high-pitched, and I’m yelling even louder. “Dammit, Danny! If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have these scars on me. Are you happy now? Are you happy that my body now carries scars just like yours?” I'm shaking, crying, and Danny holds his ground like I just obliterated his heart. He’s listening to me, and his chest rises up and down from his heavy, angered breathing, or is it from his hurting?
Either way, I can’t stop.
“You want to break me? Well, guess what, I’m broken. Mission accomplished! Do you want to hear me scream? Well, I’m screaming, and I don’t know if I’ll ever stop.” I sob, my breaths rattled. “I should have never thought this could work. I fell for you so hard. Something about you captured my heart instantly, and yet you can’t say the words I’ve felt about you since the first time you kissed me. You can’t say those three words, can you? Are you even capable of that emotion?”
I narrow my eyes at him while he watches me fall apart, and my heart pounds. Every single vein boils with emptiness. “Iknew our ending could never be a happy one.” The words spit out of my mouth, full of heartache and resentment. I resent him. I can’t stop myself. It just keeps pouring out of me like a broken dam, and the water flows without regard, destroying everything in its path.
“Well, I can say them.” Raindrops fall down my cheek, and I push him from me, hitting his broad chest, but of course, he doesn’t move, and through heavy salty tears, I shout, “I. Love. You.”
He stares into me, nostrils flaring, but then he completes changes when I say it. The tension he holds inside shifts and diminishes when I say it.
“I love you,” I repeat, shrugging. I say it like it is the easiest thing in the world for me because it is, and it’s the truth.
“I love you!” I shout again. “I love you all the time, Danny. I’ve loved you since the day I met you. I love youeven when I shouldn’t.I worry about you because I love you. Every time you walk out that door, I’m scared you won’t come back to me. I think these things because I love you. I love all of you...everything. All the parts of you that you consider dark? Every part of you that you deem unworthy? I think are beautiful…because I love you.” My voice bleeds pure honesty, pleading with him to understand why I can’t do this anymore.
It hurts to love him.
“But it hurts so much,” I whimper, looking at the flowers and then back at him, my vision blurred with crushed tears. “It pains me to love you, Danny, and…” I sob, shaking my head, biting my lip, my teeth sinking until it throbs. “I don’t think this life is for me.”
I look at him, expecting to hear some type of response, or maybe those three haunting words.
