Page 91 of I Promise You
“I could have been with our son. I could have been with Paul. Why?! Why wouldn’t you let me die?”
“Because, Ari…” He steps closer to me and I let him get close to me. So close I can feel his body heat, and he still clutches the tulips.
He leans down, so he’s right in front of my face.
“I needed to save you…like you’ve saved me.”
Some emotion flashes through his eyes, and I swear they’re watering.
“You saved me, Ari, don’t you get it?” He grabs my hand gently, holding it with his calloused hand. “I call you mylittle angelfor a reason.”
“You can’t save everyone, Danny.” I retract my hand from him. “You should have let me go.”
“What about your mother, Ari?! Why would you want her to go through losing both of her only children?” He tucks the flowers into his jeans and cups my face into his hands aggressively. “What about me?”
I shake my head, sniffling.
“I could have been with our son. I could have been with my brother,” I repeat. Am I so far gone? Is it such a horrible thing to want to follow my child into the afterlife?
He lets my face go, letting out a sarcastic scoff and smile. His face falls, but he still lingers close, not moving away.
His smile is anything but happy. It’s wicked and sinister. Then he returns my gaze, his eyes piercing through me like a knife.
“Now, look, who's the selfish one?”
I slap him across the face, hard. I didn’t even think twice about it. Something unusual came over me when he said it and I didn’t hide from it.
He looks down, emotionless and unfazed by my outburst.
Internally, I’m apologizing. I step closer to him, but then I stop myself from palming his cheek when that’s all I want to do. My hand falls back to my side. I can’t believe I just did that. I didn’t mean it.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need your apology. What I need is for you to realize that I will never let you go. You’re mine, Ari.”
He cups my face into his big, rough hands again and kisses me. His eyebrows narrow in, and he shuts his eyes tight. His kiss deepens harder and harder, but it's not from lust... I swear it’s fromlove.
Then he stops kissing me, barely moving away.
“Kane might leave the military for you, but... I would die for you,” he breathes against my lips. He sighs, retracting away from me, shrugging his shoulders, stretching his back, and I can hear his bones pop.
A tear escapes me.
I swear, even though he hasn’t said those three words specifically to me yet...it feels like he just did.
I’m stuck. I love them both, but in two different ways.
“I don’t think I can live for myself,” I whisper, my lips trembling as my dark confession unveils. I feel like I’m losing everything…even myself. I don’t want to lose him, though.
“You need to be strong, Ari. Be strong for yourself. Not for me, not for your mother. Not even for Paul, but for yourself. Embrace your wounds. Embrace every single scar because they don’t define who you are in the ways you think they do. It just means you can’t be killed so easily. You don’t go down without a fight. You’re stronger than you think. Your wings may be bent,little angel, but they aren’t broken. You’re stronger than your scars. Because they’ll fade away, but your soul won’t.”
I close my eyes, not wanting to face him anymore…it hurts too much. Everything hurts all the time.
Then he pries my hands open. I look down to find he placed the bouquet of tulips in my hand, covered in raindrops. He reaches into his other pocket and pulls out a sealed, small black envelope and drops it in my other hand.
“Merry Christmas, angel.”
He forces my hand to close around them and walks away from me.
