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When I find the kitchen empty – expectedly – my feet stumble.
My body and my heart can’t understand the fact that she’s gone. They can’t believe that I’ve sent her away.
They can’t comprehend this thing that I’ve done.
This awful, cruel thing.
They don’t get how I called her mother. How I hurt her when I’ve always promised to destroy anything and everything that dares to harm her.
My brain understands it though.
My brain grasps the betrayal.
It understands the fact that I haven’t been able to protect her. I haven’t been able to keep her safe from the world.
I understood that last night when I was reading her journals. Her thoughts and dreams that she left for me so casually on the coffee table.
Where they sit even now exactly like I left them.
All this time I kept thinking that my ruined relationship with Brian and gossip, that article, were the only casualty and consequence of that kiss.
And I could’ve stopped it all.
I could’ve stopped that kiss from happening if I had just stepped away that night and not been greedy to bask in her light. If I could’ve just walked inside my house and not approached her when I saw her through the windshield of my truck.
She was there, picking the roses, and she looked so… beautiful and fragile and pale with the moonlight illuminating her delicate lines that I had to go to her.
I had to approach her.
My legs wouldn’t listen. Like tonight, they had a mind of their own.
I wish they had obeyed me.
I wish I’d stopped myself from going to her like I had done a million times before.
Then none of this would’ve happened.
She wouldn’t have suffered like she did.
Because the biggest casualty of that kiss was the girl that I sent away this morning.
Violet.
Her.
She paid for it; she was fucking crucified for it. For something so pure and innocent. Something that was supposed to be private and for her and her only.
I could’ve protected her.
I should’ve protected her. Like I should’ve tried harder to send her away.
Because I’ve been hurting her. I’ve been hurting her in the ways I didn’t understand until I read her journals.
She’s in love with me.
She loves me.
Or maybe I did understand. She said she had a crush on me, didn’t she? So maybe I knew about her love but still, I kept her here.
She’s in love with me.
Jesus Christ.
That’s why she came here. That’s why she took everything I gave. She took it and smiled and kept coming back for more.
And I was letting her.
I was letting her take less than what she deserves. I was letting her settle. I was keeping her here because I couldn’t let go of her.
Because the thought of letting go of her makes me break out in a sweat.
It makes me panic. It twists and screws and digs the knife in my chest.
I was being selfish. So fucking selfish.
So I did the right thing. The thing I should’ve done weeks ago.
I let her go.
I let her go so she could live her life. So she could find someone worthy of her.
Someone who knows how to love. Someone who knows how to protect her and make her smile and laugh.
Someone unlike me.
Someone who doesn’t get terrified at the thought of love. At the thought of making himself so vulnerable to another human being that he can’t think straight.
I leave the kitchen and walk toward her journals, pick one up and open a random page. I sniff it like a junkie and her smell hits me in the gut.
My heart starts banging. Pounding, roaring.
My legs give out and I drop down to the couch.
I take another sniff and again, it hits me like a bullet. It makes me almost groan.
And after that, I can’t stop myself.
I can’t stop myself from flicking pages and reading her handwriting and smelling her. I rub my fingers on it, on the pages. Like they are her skin.
Like by touching them, I can touch her. I can touch her warmth, her softness. I can touch her scent.
I can’t.
She’s gone. She’s not here. I sent her away.
I did the most horrible thing I could do to her so she’d hate me. So she’d finally go back. Go back to where she belongs.
Go back home.
This is my home.
Her words echo around the cabin. They echo and crash against the windows and I hear them clearly.
Not that I haven’t been hearing them.
I’ve been driving aimlessly around all day, because I took today off for her birthday, and I’ve been hearing her voice. I’ve been playing her words on repeat.
But something about coming back to this old cabin – that doesn’t feel like home at all – makes me hear her clearer.
This is her home, she said.
How could it be though when it was never mine? How could she say that?
