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Every part of my mind wants to ignore her, but my body betrays me as I rise from the bed, lurch to the door, and open it. I must’ve done it too quickly because she flinches as I tug it towards me.

Another surge of guilt at my part in this curdles in my gut as I see her twisting her hands together, tugging at the sleeves of her oversized navy sweatshirt. It’s plain, with just text on the front that says ‘Cats & Naps’. It’s so cutely her that it has a pang gripping at the broken organ in my chest.

“You okay, Rosy?” I ask, no energy left to put effort into it.

It doesn’t work. Her brow furrows as she assesses me, her lips pursing. Wonderful, more pain I’m causing her.

“I just wondered…no, I wanted to talk to you,” she corrects herself, pushing more assertion into her words as she tucks the stray hair escaping her braid behind her ear. A small part of me feels pride at her voicing her wants, but as it’s directed at me, and I’ve been avoiding talking to her…

I shake my head, brushing a hand over my face in defeat. “Okay…”

She avoids looking at me as she crosses her arms over her chest, and I’m not sure if it’s in defence or to help strengthen her.

“You’re pushing me away, Max, and I don’t know why. If you don’t tell me what’s happened, or what I’ve done wrong, then I don’t know what I need to fix. Shutting me out like this is just making me feel really shitty.”

That’s not what I expected. She thinks she’s done something wrong?

“You haven’t done anything,” I promise, mirroring her stance.

“Then what?” she pushes, not able to let it go apparently.

I go to tell her to just forget it, but other words leave my mouth instead. “I keep fucking up.”

It’s hard to keep looking at her, especially as I admit my wrongdoings.

“You haven’t?” she says, seeming surprised.

I scoff, frustration building again. “I have. All of this is my fault. Everything you went through is on me.” I exclaim.

She flinches.

Yet another example of me hurting her.

Her brows crease, head shaking a fraction as she watches me, waiting for me to continue.

I know I have to tell her since I can’t stay silent about my part in this any longer. I’d hoped I’d have more time before she hated me, though.

“When you disappeared, I was the one who went to your office to see if you’d been there.” My voice breaks. Somehow I push through, unable to stop now that I’ve started. “He told me you wanted a fresh start and left, and I believed it. Automatically. I thought it had to be true because you wanted to get away from us, from me. I didn’t even bother to question him. I doubted you and what we had.” I grimace, and her face remains blank at my confession. “The others were all here, trying to figure out if you were okay. I should’ve known something was off. Instead I was out getting wasted and drowning my sorrows.”

My chest is heaving by the time I finish getting it all out, and my arms are no longer crossed over my chest. Instead, my hands grip the doorframe tightly as she lingers on the other side.

Her lips pinch ever so slightly.

“He was a very good manipulator,” she whispers, head dropping and shoulders curling. “You couldn’t have known… How often do people you know get kidnapped? I’m sure statistics show someone’s more likely to leave a relationship than get kidnapped by someone they worked with. So it makes sense that’s where your mind went.”

The image of her when I walked into that room, seeing her lying there bound and hurt, flashes in my mind. It haunts me every minute of every day, and reliving that fear has tremors coursing through my body.

She shouldn’t be justifying my mistakes.

“All of this, everything that happened to you, I could’ve stopped if I tried harder. Everything you’re suffering is on me,” I bite out, ignoring her words and the way she squirms under my ire. No matter what she says, I didn’t do enough. And I’ll never forgive myself for that.

I can still feel the cool skin of her abused body as I held her in my arms. It’s not just her nightmares that keep me awake; it’s me avoiding mine. Because she’s always in them, sometimes we save her…but sometimes we don’t.

I feel frayed and on edge. The pull to hold her, to feel her breathing and know she’s alive, battles against the self-hatred hounding me. It reminds me I don’t deserve to have her care, her presence.

“You can’t stay living in this guilt forever, Maxi. That’s not even living,” she whispers softly.

Except I don’t understand why she’d want me to let it go. I deserve to carry its weight, not for myself but for her. I’ve hurt her too many times for her to forgive me. Maybe that’s why I spend so much time hating myself, because she won’t do it for me.