Chapter 87 (1/2)

“?‘There can be no happy end to it,’?” she quotes my previous words.

Fucking Hemingway and his shitty outlook on life. “That was a stupid thing for me to say. I didn’t mean it,” I promise her.

“?‘I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?’?” she quotes the bastard again. Leave it to Tessa to have perfect recall while she’s too drunk to even stand.

“Shh, we can quote Hemingway when you’re sober.”

“?‘All things truly wicked start from innocence,’?” she says against my neck, arms tightening across my back as I push her bedroom door open.

I used to love that line, as I never understood the meaning. I thought I did, but it’s not until now, when I’m living the fucking meaning, that I actually get it.

My mind growing heavy with guilt, I gently lay her on the bed and toss the pillows to the floor, leaving one for her head. “Scoot up,” I softly command.

She doesn’t have her eyes open and I can tell she’s close to sleep, finally. I leave the light off, hoping she will sleep the rest of the night.

“Stayinggg?” she says, drawing the word out.

“Do you want me to stay? I can sleep in another room,” I offer, even though I don’t want to. She’s so off, so detached from herself, that I’m almost afraid to leave her alone.

“Mhmm,” she mumbles, reaching for the blanket. She tugs at the corner and huffs in frustration when she can’t get the fabric loose enough to cover herself.

After I help cover her, I take my shoes off and climb into the bed with her. While I’m debating how much space to leave between our bodies, she wraps a bare thigh around my waist, pulling me closer.

I can breathe. Finally, I can fucking breathe.

“I was scared you weren’t going to be okay,” I admit into the silence of the dark room.

“Me, too,” she agrees in a broken voice.

I push my arm under her head, and she shifts her hips, turning into me and tightening her leg around my body.

I don’t know where to go from here; I don’t know what I did to her that made her this way.

Yes—yes, I do. I treated her like shit and took advantage of her kindness. I used up chance after chance, like the supply would never end. I took the trust she gave me and ripped it up like it meant nothing and threw it in her face every time I felt like I wasn’t good enough for her.

If I would have just accepted her love from the beginning, accepted her trust and cherished the life she tried to breathe into me, she wouldn’t be this way now. She wouldn’t be lying next to me drunk and upset, defeated and destroyed by me.

She fixed me; she glued the tiny fragments of my fucked-up soul into something impossible, something almost attractive even. She made me into something—she made me normal almost—but with each drop of glue she used on me, she lost that drop of herself, and me being the piece of shit I am, didn’t have anything to offer her.

Everything that I feared would happen has happened, and no matter how much I tried to prevent it, I see now that I made it worse. I changed her and ruined her, just the way I promised I would all those months ago.