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Carter staggers to his feet, and uses this distraction to run towards Logan, driving into his torso with brute force, causing Quaid to defend himself too. Now it’s the three of them fighting each other. Again, the maddening sense of déjà vu is crippling, so much so that it takes me a second to scream out at them to end this.
"Stop!" I cry, leaping towards the fray, even though I know it's a stupid idea.
I barely miss a fist to my nose as I pull at Logan to try and drag him from the fight. Who knew that the boy I'd always considered the sweetheart of the group had such a fight inside of him?
Logan lets me pull him away from the group, his chest rising and falling heavily as he catches his breath. Quaid and Carter exchange one more blow before they both stagger back as well.
"So that's it, you've finally picked," spits out Carter as he glares at Logan with a hate-filled gaze.
"I've picked Logan?" I ask, completely confused how the morning turned into this.
"Try not to sound too excited about that," Logan mumbles, hurt under his breath, while staring daggers at Carter.
"I—" I don't even know what to say. What is going on?
"What the fuck?" growls Quaid confused, his attention now on me and Logan instead of Carter. "You picked him?"
"No—" I try to explain, trying to make sense of this chaotic misunderstanding, but the pained stare Logan throws at me tells me he has evidently heard enough. He storms out the door without another word or a single look back, defeat slumping his shoulders.
Carter watches him go smugly. "Good choice, Valentina. You really picked the guy who would stay with you through thick and thin, didn’t you?" he rebukes, disdain tainting his every word.
"You're an asshole," I whisper hoarsely as tears start to well up in my eyes.
I can feel a headache developing, and my brain is having trouble following what's going on. "Whoever this cruel man is that you've become, I don't want anything to do with him," I tell him, fiercely disappointed he could act so callously with me and the friends who have always been his family.
There's a tick in Carter's cheek as he clenches his teeth before he swears and stalks out of the room, apparently done with me, much like Logan seems to be.
My legs feel weak all of a sudden and I stumble my way to the bed to sit down. I look desperately at Quaid, hopeful that he will have some sort of answer for what just happened, some solace to give.
"I'm not going to be your leftovers, princess," he responds scornfully, but his cold statement isn’t what makes me want to crawl up into a ball in the corner of this hotel room. It’s the look of utter loss and anguish swimming in his perfect green eyes that cracks my heart down the middle.
Just like the others, he leaves the room, his head bowed down in sorrow and despair, mimicking my own misery. The only sound that’s left is the front door to the suite banging open before slamming itself shut.
And then there's just silence.
I hate the silence.
I've spent most of the last ten years trying to avoid the empty silence that signifies just how alone I am in the world.
My hands tremble as I try to process how last night became the horror show of this morning. Yesterday, I experienced a sliver of happiness that I always dreamed about, only to have it stolen from me the moment the sun rose.
I can't breathe.
It feels like it took everything in me to get to this point. That I gave everything I could, and yet it didn’t matter. It wasn’t enough.
Sobbing, I pick up the glass lamp next to the bed, and attempt to throw it. But of course, I can't even do that right as the plug prevents it from going far, and it ends up shattering all over the nightstand instead. I gasp when a shard hits my palm and slices it open, a single lonely drop of my blood falling to the ground.
I fall to my knees to the carpet, the tiny slivers from the broken lamp tearing into my skin.
Three months.
That’s all I wanted.
I just want to be with them for three months and finally be happy, even if that joy is fleeting.
But maybe that’s asking for too much. Maybe we were always destined to end like this. To burn away until there was nothing left but this aching loneliness inside of me. Maybe I was always meant to take this last journey by myself.
But I don’t want to.
