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And now, the irony, the justice of it: I am the one who needs desperately to be forgiven.
And I know it deep in my bones, that I never will be.
“I didn’t know!” I whisper to her, as she crouches beside me on stage. “I didn’t know, Eden. I had no idea. I’m such an idiot, I never knew.”
“As I said,” Eden whispers back, “it makes no sense. None of it. You, me, this story of ours.”
“I wouldn’t change it,” I say, almost vehemently, “if it ends up with you here, right now.”
“I would.”
The crowd has gone quiet all around us. Weirdly, there are no phones in the air. How is this possible? How is nobody filming this? Maybe after my speech, someone heard me and understood it. Maybe everyone did.
Maybe I do have a voice, after all.
“We need to get you backstage, Isaiah.” Skye’s voice is in my ear, and strong hands are grabbing me under the armpits. The stage lights have shifted from Eden and me, and we are obscured in darkness as the guards surround us. Jude starts playing one of his famous solos on the bass, and the crowd is starting to cheer and terror grips me.
No. No no no.I don’t them to cheer for her. She cannot be a part of my public mess.
“Get her out of here,” I murmur to the guards, “right now.”
I watch as one of my guards lifts her up bodily. I wince as he grabs her narrow waist, even though he’s super gentle.No one touches her but me, my body thinks, getting hard all over.
Shut up, stupid body.
I watch the guards angling their bodies to hide Eden and me as we move quickly off stage. No matter what I said, the phones are about to be coming out sooner or later and the less of us that’s plastered all over social media, the better.
“I didn’t know,” I repeat as soon as we are backstage. All my attention is on Eden, no matter what is happening around us. Her eyes are huge and full of fear. “Eden, tell me you believe me.” I search her eyes, but she hides her face with her hand. “Tell me what you need.”
“Don’t look at me,” she murmurs behind her figures.
“What? Why? Hey! Eden…” I’m freaking out right now. This is how she used to be all the time: head down, cheeks red, lips white. We can’t go back to that. We just can’t. I reach out to touch her cheek, and she flinches at my touch. “Eden? You’re scaring me, baby. Why don’t you want me to look at you?”
“Because I’m so ashamed of what happened to me. When I first saw you, I thought you knew, and still you treated me like everyone else.”
“Like a jerk.”
“Yes. I was almost delighted, you know. But it wasn’t true. You didn’t know. You’ll change now. You’ll be all pity, like Jude.”
I rub my forehead. Every word that comes out of her mouth is so wrong, I can’t begin to explain it to her. But I have to. I have to.
“Jude is not pitying you. He loves you. And I… Look at me. Have I changed?”
“You’re not being a jerk right now,” she says, still not looking at me.
“Well, give it a minute,” I murmur.
She doesn’t smile. “You… All this time, you didn’t know?” she whispers. “I was just normal to you until now?”
“You were never normal to me, Eden. You were my everything.”
This time, she half smiles and my heart does a somersault.
“Don’t you see?” she says. “He destroyed us back then, and he’s doing it again. Even now, after all these years, even though he’s… he’s gone. He is still destroying me.”
“Not this time,” I say softly. “This time it was all me.”
She says nothing.
