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“No. No, Scar, stop it. Don’t do this.”
I push out of his arms, looking up at him. “When we get back on Monday, I want you to go home.”
TWENTY-NINE
Scarlet
The look on Lance’s face when I told him to go home doesn’t leave me the entire trip home. I closed my eyes for the majority, hoping to fall asleep, but with him on the other side of the plane, his pain like an invisible thread tugging on my heart, I couldn’t.
I wanted to take the words back the second they left my mouth. Not because I didn’t mean them. I did in that moment, after what I witnessed in that shack. But because hurting him is the last thing on earth I’d ever want to do.
It’s like putting a hand to an exposed hob.
You wouldn’t do it because it’s wrong.
He didn’t try to come to my room after I told him I wanted him to go home, and I didn’t expect him to.
When the sun came up, and I was lay on the bed alone the next morning, as the light rushed in, I knew I’d been cold. That I’d seen those caskets and spiralled. I can still feel the churning in my stomach at the thought, the need to run a million miles from anything and anyone who holds the power to hurt me.
And yet I know the fact I haven’t eaten since, and the sickness I had early into the flight, is because I’ve causedhimpain.
Lance doesn’t deserve that, and I can’t stand it.
When Vinny pulls up to the estate, Lance wakes Ave up, taking her hand and walking her into the house.
I watch them with an aching, heavy heart.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Scarlet?” Vinny asks, unloading the last of the suitcases.
Can you fix me?
“No, Vin, you should go rest. It’s been a long two days of travel.”
He nods, still watching me. “You know where I am.”
I give him the best smile I can find, waiting for him to leave before I head for my parents’ garden. I sit down between the two headstones, looking out across the meadow and hilltop in the distance.
I’m not sure if I prefer sitting here in their garden or looking down on it from the hill.
“I don’t want to be a horrible person,” I say after a while. “It feels like a lose-lose situation. I can love him and lose him, then become a version of myself I know I can’t come back from again. A version Ave doesn’t deserve to witness and remember. Or I can let him go, and I hurt him. I become the woman who refused to love him.” I stare at the sun, sending the world into a burst of white when I look away. “I hate myself either way, but I know that I’d hate myself more if I hurt Ave.”
I lie back on the grass, closing my eyes as my hands settle on the grass.
“I thought I was getting better, guys. Like I almost let him back in.”
Maybe I need time.
What happened in Bora Bora really messed with my head. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so triggered—even after some of my worst shifts at the hospital.
I sigh. “I have to apologise to Lance, but I’m scared.” I’m scared to even look him in the eye.
I sit for over half an hour contemplating all the ways I could say sorry.
We spent a week together in one of my most treasured places on earth, and I ruined it all with a rash handful of words which I know came from a place of pure fear.
I lie, trying to figure out what my mum would say if she were here.
“I should probably call Fran.”
