Page 168 of Sorrow & Strangers

As if those distractions would somehow lessen our connection. I brush away another tear that falls from her eyes. She sobs and hits my chest with her fists as I gather her close. “Stop wanting me. Stop watching me. Stop forgiving me. I’m not fucking yours.”

She continues to sob until she collapses into me. She clings to my shirt, and I cuddle her against my chest, letting her shatter against me. I move to lift her into my arms, but she tenses and looks up, shaking her head. “I don’t want to go to your house.”

“We can stay right here,” I say, lifting her against me and wrapping her legs around my waist. Cupping the back of her head in my hand, I guide her face into my neck. “Right here, princess.”

She nods and nuzzles her face against my throat as she sobs. I hold her, stroking her hair, letting her know without words that if she breaks, I’ll hold the pieces of her together. I don’t know how long we stay like that, and it doesn’t really matter, but as her sobs slow, she pulls back and looks up at me. Tenderly, I brush her tears from her cheek, but otherwise I don’t acknowledge them.

“Why won’t you leave me alone?” she whispers brokenly.

“Because you haunt me just as much as I do you.” I scan her eyes. “If not more so. You may feel I’m the ghost who haunts your steps, but you are the phantom of my entire life.”

“That is not an explanation.” She stiffens, struggling in my hold until I put her down on her feet. “I don’t seek you out.”

She does, but pretends she doesn’t.

“You don’t have to. I can’t stop thinking about you, even when I don’t want to. I dream of you. I smell you. Everywhere I look, I sense the ghost of you.”

She bristles but still clings to me. “That has nothing to do with me.”

“It has everything to do with you,” I correct.

“How can you still hold me when I’ve just fucked someone else?” She tightens her hold on my shirt. “How can you still want to be around me?”

She asks this because somewhere in her heart and soul, she knows she’d never forgive me if the roles were reversed.

“Because I’m forced to be patient. To know that even as you go to others, it will always be you and me at the end.”

Our breaths and hearts are synchronized, beating and breathing for each other, both strengthening and weakening the other.

Beginning and end.

“I was going to marry Connor,” she whispers, shaking her head.

I cup her cheek, trying to make her understand. “No, you weren’t.”

She snarls, slapping my hands away, backing up. “Yes I was. I love Connor. He was the one for me. The only one.”

“Yet you hid parts of yourself from him,” I growl, my eyes narrowed. “Parts you wished would disappear.”

She flinches, putting more space between us. “How could you . . .” She shakes her head, her eyes glowing with anger. “Fuck you. Fuck your oath.”

I grab her arm, knowing she is going to run, just like she always does when she is confronted with the truths she doesn’t want to face. “How could I know? Because you showed them to me. Because I lived the same life. I hid and broke myself into little pieces to make those around me happy.”

She snarls more, her lips curling back from her teeth. “If you truly knew, how could you throw that back at me? I trusted you.” Her eyes flash with anger. “And every fucking second, I wish it was you who had died.”

I release my hold on her and step back, staring at her, letting those words sit between us.

Chapter Seventy-Three

Summer

“And every fucking second, I wish it was you who died.”

Then the silence hangs heavy between us. My anger evaporates into nothing. Regret sinks its claws into me, slicing deeper the longer I look at him. He just stares back at me.

It is a lie. A lie. A lie.

I want to pull it back, to unspeak the words. My whole body knows how wrong they are. What have I done?