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I’m waiting for more, for her to tell me what she did all day, but nothing follows. There’s only silence.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Sephie gives me a sad smile. The look in her eyes almost breaks my heart. It seems like she’s carrying the weight of the entire world on her shoulders. But she only blinks a couple of times, stifling a yawn behind her hand. Now that I’m really looking, I can see the bone-deep exhaustion weighing on her. Still, she came despite it, just to be here for me because I was being a fucking asshole.
“Rough day?” she asks, finally sitting beside me. Her voice is neutral, but her eyes are concerned.
“Probably not as bad as you,” I respond.
“Marcus mentioned you were in a lot of pain,” she says gently.
I shrug, because what’s there to say. “There’s nothing I can do to make it go away.”
“When did you start?” she asks.
“Well, the pain began right after the accident when I broke several bones and bruised most of my body,” I answer, trying to sound funny but failing miserably.
Sephie scowls at me. “The addiction to painkillers,” she clarifies when I look confused. “You didn’t use to drink much and now . . . why?”
I shift uncomfortably, gathering the courage to open up. She wants to understand my addiction, but it’s hard to expose this ugliness even to her. I’m ashamed, but it was the only way to cope.
Taking a shaky breath, I begin haltingly. “The drinking probably started right after you kicked me out of your life.” When I glance at her, Seraphina is staring out at the dark horizon. She doesn’t respond, so I continue. “It was easier to deal with the new reality. I tried to reach out, but you rejected me.”
She scoffs softly. “So, you’re blaming me?”
“The circumstances,” I clarify. “Everything was too much to handle alone. I had lost my father’s respect. Your love. My best friend was dead.”
“Plus, you didn’t have her,” she adds pointedly.
I don’t ask who she means or tell her that she’s wrong, because it’s a subject I don’t want to dabble in right now. It’s best if I just keep answering her questions and when she’s ready to hear it, we’ll talk about Iris.
“I got into a bad car accident after that. My back was really hurting, so they prescribed me pain meds. Those helped me function again. I didn’t realize how dependent I’d grown until they tapered the dosage, and I just . . . unraveled. I felt so weak, but the pills made me strong again.”
I tap my chest with my good hand. “The alcohol consumption never stopped, and I didn’t realize that the drugs . . . well, they soothed the pain in my soul. All the things missing in my life, the voids—it was best to just numb all that, you know?”
I pause, sifting through my darkest thoughts. “I chased relief however I could—pills, powders, needles . . . anything to silence the memories. To forget that I was slowly dying on the inside.” I shake my head bitterly. “Pathetic, right?”
Seraphina stands abruptly. “Maybe if you’d paid for your sins, you wouldn’t be drowning in them now.” But suddenly she gasps, covering her mouth. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
I laugh humorlessly. “My only sin was loving you too much to see you suffer.” Anger swells, at the world, at the unfairness of it all. “I fucked up by saving others. And now there’s no one left to save me, to fight for me. No one.”
“Do it for yourself,” she says firmly. “Not for anyone but yourself.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I call as she turns to leave.
She pauses under the threshold. “Yet, I feel dirty,” she whispers.
“Do you regret us?” The question escapes before I can stop it.
She turns, eyes closed as if savoring a memory. Even now, she takes my breath away. “I wish I could. But I can’t.”
Then she’s gone. I don’t know what to make of her words. But they offer hope. Part of me wants to chase oblivion, to silence the anguish ripping through me or better yet, beg her for a kiss. A kiss that will soothe the pain, that would fill the emptiness.
A kiss that will remind me what life is all about.
But maybe I can hold onto that. Just a minute of her time had given me something. For the first time in forever, I feel alive in this raw pain. I cling to it, letting the darkness wash over me.
And something tells me to just give her the truth. Say fuck it and do it, the voice repeats.
