Page 94 of Broken Vows

Even if it means trapping her in my hell with me.

I can’t be in my place anymore. She wasn’t here that often, yet every corner feels empty without her. I decide to go for a run around my neighborhood instead. Am I running to her? Am I running away from what I’ve done?

I need her to understand. Maybe she’s had time to calm down. Maybe she’s realized that what I did back then was for her.

Fuck. It wasn’t.

It was for me.

How could I have done this? I honestly didn’t think that she wouldn’t be able to transfer school after the expulsion, but does that even matter? Or is that just another excuse I’m feeding myself? What the fuck is wrong with me?

And still… I had to save her. Those girls… what happened to them… if that had happened to Lexie, I would’ve died. Fucking died.

But she has to talk to me. Doesn’t she see this? We’ll talk, we’ll make up, we’ll fuck, we’ll spend the night intertwined, she’ll sleep on my chest, we’ll be okay. All she has to do is talk to me.

I keep running, my lungs on fire, sweat dripping down my face. Maybe I should confess to her how much she’s haunted me all these years. That from the moment on the quad, as she stood with her wide, beautiful green eyes, haloed like a sun fire in the golden afternoon, she seeped into my hallowed soul and altered me. For better or worse, she’s etched herself permanently into my heart.

I’m finally forced to slow, and as I walk, her broken sobs replay in my head. For the first time in my life, I turn to an unknown entity to take away her pain. Even if she never speaks to me again, even if I can never touch that porcelain skin, or kiss those plush lips, or hold her, I pray for her to stop hurting.

I walk without direction in the city, street after street, carried forward by nothing but a foreign, inexplicable helplessness. And I think—about how different my life looks now than it did a few months ago, how different it will look in two weeks. I once believed happiness was a myth, an emotion people pretended to understand.

Until her.

Pain—what remains when the happiness you once tasted is gone. I didn’t know it until now.

A crimson-haired angel infiltrated the devil’s lair and showed me a slice of heaven that I never earned. I will never forget her. And as I walk until my legs give out, until the streets are unfamiliar, until exhaustion claims me, I keep praying.

42 Lexie

For hours, I cry on the floor of my apartment, feeling the shattered pieces of my soul skirt outside my body. Everything hurts.

I need to get out of here. There are too many memories of him in my room, and I can’t process, or think, or heal, or do anything but cry. I pack a small bag and take the subway to the one place that will help give me the comfort I need.

When I reach my mom’s apartment building, I drag myself up the stairs and rap on the door. She opens it with surprised eyes. I collapse into her arms and sob.

“Oh, my sweet girl…”

I crawl onto the couch that was my bed for so many years and bury my face into the pillow. Even in the July heat, she grabs my tattered childhood blanket, drapes it over my body, and runs her fingers through my hair until I fall asleep.

When I pry my crusty eyes open into the familiar, warm space, my mom’s left a note on the coffee table that she didn’t want to wake me, but there’s coffee in the pot and bread in the fridge. I glance at my phone to check the time. I’m late for work, I’ve missed dozens of calls from Theo, Justin, Sydney, and the receptionist, Megan.

But I don’t care.

The sun beams inside my mom’s tiny studio, but everything is dark. I can hardly drag myself to the bathroom, much less force down food and water. I pick up my phone to call Sydney to tell her I won’t be in today. But I can’t. My limbs are tree trunks, my fingers numb, my head weighs a thousand pounds.

I go back to sleep.

When I wake again, the afternoon sun is setting. I finally lift myself and fill a plastic cup with water from the tap, take a bite of bread, and glance at even more missed messages.

I return to the couch, drag the blanket over myself, and go back to sleep.

The door closes with a soft click, and I peek out at my mother removing her shoes at the mat. “How you doing? Did you eat?”

I shake my head. She spends the evening bringing me soup and tea, brushing my hair, and finally tucks me back under my blanket. My eyes flutter closed.

When the sun wakes me up again, there’s another note from my mother, two full glasses of water on the coffee table, accompanied by a box of saltine crackers, and another nearly twenty missed calls. My head is pounding. But it’s mild compared to the pain ravaging my insides. I finally reach for the phone, delete all the ones from Theo without reading, but send a group message to Justin and Sydney that I came down with something horrible and will be back to work when I feel better.

Even the effort of letting people know I’m alive makes me feel like I’ve run a marathon. I turn my phone off completely and go back to sleep. Maybe if I stay here, at my mom’s, under this blanket, I can pretend that none of this is happening. That Theo didn’t lie to me for months and kill my dreams all those years ago.