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It kills me, thinking about her trying to escape right after I told her that I have feelings for her.
She manipulated me from the start.
I unlock the door and go inside.
Hellie’s sitting in a chair near the window, her knees pulled to her chest, her eyes red from crying. I stand in the doorway, my heart fucking broken, watching her for a long time. Everything we’ve done together floods back: kissing her, fucking her, taking care of her. This is my Hellie, and I thought we had something real.
She looks back at me, tries to smile, but it fades.
“Is it true?” I ask. “You tried to escape?”
“Yes,” she says. “It’s true.”
I want to ask a dozen things. Why, how, what did I do wrong, why now? Except I can’t make any of it come out. I continue looking at her, searching for that feeling from the night before, trying to hold on to that little bit of goodness in my life.
The feeling’s still there. The connection, the need. It’s still there, and that’s what kills me the most.
I feel like I’ve been dumped into the desert with a rock crushing my spine. My body’s numb, my brain’s gone haywire.
She betrayed me.
She tried to run after all this.
Even knowing Gallo and Frost are out there and both of them want to kill her, she still tried to escape.
The first chance she got, she took it.
Despite everything. Despite the night before when I admitted how I really felt.
She tried to run away.
If it had been the first week, if it had been before everything we said to each other, I might be able to find way past this.
Right now? I don’t think I can ever forgive her.
“There will be new rules,” I say, struggling to keep my voice steady. It takes more effort than I like to admit. “I can’t trust you anymore.”
“Okay. I understand.” Her voice is flat, like it’s coming from someone else. She looks defeated, slumped over, small.
“We still have a job to do, despite your escape attempt.”
“I get it.”
“There will be new restrictions. Hellie—” I shut my mouth with a click. I want to stride across the room, drag her to her feet, and kiss her hard until her mouth bleeds.
I want her to understand what this means. I want her to feel how this feels.
Instead, I’ll keep going the best I can.
She betrayed me and there’s no coming back from that.
“I know,” she whispers. She’s blinking away tears.
Crying? Why the fuck would she be crying?
“Stay here until someone comes to get you.” I turn and move to leave because I don’t think I can handle this. I’m too raw.
“It wasn’t because of you,” she says before I can go. I don’t turn around to look at her. That doesn’t help—it anything, I feel worse. If I stay right now, I’ll say something I might regret, I’ll do something that will make me hate myself, and I don’t want that. “It wasn’t because of you,” she repeats softly.
