Page 49 of No Greater Oblivion

“You don’t hate me. You’re hurt. You’re angry with me, and I deserve it, but you don’t hate me.”

“Stop fucking telling me how I feel!” she snaps. “I’m sick and tired of everyone telling me what I feel, what I’m experiencing, as if I’m incapable of figuring it out for myself. I do hate you. I loathe you, I resent you, I wish I’d never laid eyes on you, I wish I’d never…I wish I had never loved you⁠—”

“Dahlia.”

“Because from the moment you entered my life you’ve done nothing but wreak havoc. I had a life here. It wasn’t a lot and it wasn’t perfect but it was still mine and I gave it up to be with you because I loved you and I thought you were worth the sacrifice. The least you could’ve done was make a halfhearted attempt at getting me back after ruining my life.”

“You were the one who left!”

“You never asked me to stay!”

Silence befalls the room. Dahlia can’t seem to catch her breath.

“Had it ever occurred to you that all I wanted was to see you try? To see something. Anything. All I wanted was a reaction out of you.”

My lungs tighten with the effort to speak. “It’s been a year, Dahlia. A year of me being stuck in our old life in our old home and you upended all of it…to get a reaction out of me?”

Tears rush to her eyes but she won’t let a single one fall; she’s too stubborn for that. “What else was I supposed to do? You shut down on me. Nothing was the same after the fire. It’s not my fucking job to fix you, Alejandro. You didn’t want to be helped, and there was nothing I could do. I thought…I thought that if maybe⁠—”

It feels like the ground has been pulled out from under me. I can’t carry my own weight anymore and find support on the armrest of a nearby chair. “What a stupid fucking thing to do, Dahlia.”

Her lips purse with indignation. “You were suffocating me. Overprotective and overbearing⁠—”

“I was protecting you⁠—”

“Not to mention secretive. Had you told me the truth about Sandro and how the fire really started, things would’ve been different.”

“And after the fact? How do you explain your behavior once you got back to New York? Lettie will leave the room if I try to broach the topic of your falling out, and Diego acts like he’s mourning a dead person. Do you think that what happened between us gave you the right to destroy those relationships?”

She drops her head, too ashamed to meet my gaze.

“You broke their hearts, Dahlia.”

“It wasn’t intentional,” she defends quickly. “I was angry.”

“Angry at me, and you took it out on them. Why? Did they do something to you that I don’t know about?”

“No!” She insists and drags a hand across her cheek. “Of course not.”

“Were you doing it to hurt me then? Did you figure the easiest way to get to me was through Diego and Lettie?”

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you—I loved you! I just…”

Dahlia’s voice trails off and when she doesn’t continue, I find myself relieved. I don’t think I have it in me to sit and argue in circles with her any longer.

Finally, I ask, “What are you going to do about Rian?”

She turns away from me and focuses on something out the window. “What is there to do about Rian?”

“Dahlia…”

Her eyes flutter shut.

“I’ve known him for over a decade. Don’t⁠—”

Before I can finish my sentence, she spins on the balls of her feet and rushes upstairs.

And just like a year ago, I let her go without a fight.