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“Be real with yourself too. If you’re gonna talk about the stuff you think you did wrong, be honest. You also didn’t think you deserved more. I can see that in you. You were tryin’ to prove yourself because that’s what made you feel worthy of love, friendship, life. Because you don’t feel worthy of that. Not then, and not now.”
No, no I didn’t. I couldn’t believe how well Sam knew me. Almost better than I knew myself.
“Anyway, it was okay for Daniel at first, but as the years went by, he changed, and I didn’t. It became a constant argument between us. I knew I wasn’t making him happy, but I was too selfish to change. No matter what I did, I was always screwing up. It was always wrong. And regardless of what people might believe, I didn’t want to lose him. His love for me was why he stayed, but the fighting started happening more and more. He didn’t want to go out; I did. He wanted a house outside the city; I didn’t. His sister said she would be a surrogate; I refused. His parents, who had always been good to me, started to get angry because they realized I wasn’t good enough for him.”
“No. You just wanted different things. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.”
I ignored his reply. “He started to pull away, and I did too. That night, we were supposed to stay in together, but this guy I’d been trying to work with for years was in town. He wanted to go out at the last minute. I agreed because I always did. Daniel refused to go. We argued. It was bad. I left. I was drinking, and Curtis—the potential client—asked me where my partner was. I ended up rambling about fighting with him, which didn’t look good during my trial. I was complaining about how Daniel changed the rules and wanted more than I could offer. How tired I was of fighting with him.”
My chest got heavier with each word. My throat closed up more, and I knew the only reason I wasn’t crying was because I’d used up all my tears earlier.
“I was hammered. I’d definitely drunk too much. I got a ride home and knew if I went into our room, I’d wake him up, and we’d argue again, so I passed out on the couch. I slept…angry with him…while he was dying alone. I… Fuck.” I dug my heels into my eyes, was surprised to find them wet again. “I went into the room the next morning and found him.”
Twenty-two stab wounds.
Crime of passion.
Daniel’s wide, lifeless eyes.
The blood…all the fucking blood.
“What if I could have saved him? I fucking hate myself for that. For living, for leaving him alone. I can’t…” I shook my head, refused to unravel the way I had earlier.
“Em…”
“It made sense that they thought it was me,” I continued. I needed to get this out so I could pack it away again and bury it even deeper than before. “It’s always the significant other. I’d been vocal about our fight that night, and his friends and family knew we were struggling because Daniel wanted more. There was no evidence of anyone else being in our apartment. They found fingerprints in our kitchen, but they couldn’t match them to anyone, and hell, it could have been anyone. Daniel was friendly. He was the kind of guy who invited delivery men in just to be nice.
“They had no evidence on me, though. They never found the murder weapon. There was no blood on me. But the verdict finding me innocent didn’t matter. The damage was done. Daniel was dead, and to everyone, even his family, I had killed him. I will never…” I closed my eyes, saw the way his mom had looked at me, with eyes so similar to her son’s. The hate I’d seen there. “I will never forget what his mom said to me, the way she looked at me. She told me I killed her son, and she was right. Not in the way she thinks, but right nevertheless.”
“No,” Sam replied softly. “She wasn’t. And I don’t know how someone can know you and believe that. I’m not gonna say I wasn’t thrown for a loop when I first looked up your name, but there wasn’t a part of me that thought you did it. I believe you, Emerson. I trust you. You woulda never hurt him, and I’m so damn sorry you had to go through all that. And I’m sorry for Daniel too.”
Those words filled me up when they shouldn’t, gave me something back that I didn’t deserve. Hope. Too bad I didn’t know how to let myself have it, didn’t know if I could. Didn’t want to bring Sam into this fucked-up mess that was me and my life. “I—”
