"She'll get over it," I mutter, no longer sure that's true. I haven't been sure since she walked out, looking through me instead of at me. But I need him to hate me, too. It's what she deserves—for him to never mention my name to her again.
He stares at me. "Do you even hear yourself right now? Or are you just too far gone to give a shit? You didn't just break her heart, you insufferable prick. You destroyed her."
"I'm not the one who left her alone with me, Liam. That was you."
He grabs me by the front of my shirt, slamming me into the wall so hard the drywall cracks behind my head. I don't try to fight back.
"She loves you, you asshole," he hisses, driving his fist into my face again. "She loves you, and you fucking shattered her."
I know what I did to her. That's the worst part. It made so much fucking sense while I was doing it. I thought it'd set her free, that she'd finally, finally be rid of me. I thought if I broke her, I could excise myself from her heart, just cut away the part that held me, and she'd finally be able to move on. She could be happy again. Except…I think I fucked that up, too.
"I never deserved her love," I say, the truest thing I think I've ever said. "One day, she'll realize it, too."
Liam mutters a curse and then drags me down the hall toward the guest bathroom. I let him, too fucking tired to fight. I don't even fight when he throws me into the tiled shower and turns the water on full blast.
The frigid water hits me like a fist. My clothes soak through immediately, dried blood mixing with the alcohol I've spilled as it swirls down the drain. The pain is sharp as the water stings my split lip, the gashes he left across my face, and the barely-healed wounds on my hands from the damage I did to my office in LA.
I just sit there, letting it burn.
Liam stands over me, watching with his arms crossed. For a long time, he doesn't say anything. When he finally does speak, his voice is soft, almost gentle.
"I get it," he says. "You think you don't deserve to be happy. You think that if you punish yourself hard enough for a fucking accident, it'll balance the scales. But that's not how it works, Ash."
I close my eyes. The water is so hot my skin feels like it's peeling off. Or maybe that's the goddamn truth trying to flay me alive.
"Making her hate you won't fix a goddamn thing. It's just going to destroy both of you."
"You know why I did it?" I ask when I can't fucking stand it any longer. "Because I've always loved her. Always. For a long time, I told myself it was nothing, that it was just a phase. I tried to killit. I tried every way I could think of to not be the kind of man who—"
My voice cracks. I can't remember the last time I cried, or if I even can. I look up at him.
"I am that man, though," I say, my throat raw. "When it comes to her, I am that man."
"Loving her isn't wrong, you stupid bastard," he rasps.
"I saw the red light that night," I say. "I saw it, Liam. I could have stopped. But she was kissing me, and it's what I'd wanted since the moment I met her. The light didn't fucking matter to me because I was invincible with her lips on mine."
He goes very still. I see the moment the truth hits him, see the slow, sick realization that the one thing he's always forgiven me for is the one thing I've never deserved forgiveness for.
"I'll never deserve her, not when my own goddamn selfishness is the reason she died that night." I laugh without humor. "It's the reason we both did."
"You son of a bitch," he groans. And when he hits me this time, it doesn't hurt at all. "You stupid son of a bitch."
He looks at me with something like pity burning in his eyes before he turns and walks out, leaving me shaking and bleeding all over the shower.
I sit there for hours after he leaves, cold water pouring over me until I can't feel my fucking legs. I'm not sure if I've blacked outor if I'm just not moving, but when I finally look up, dawn is stretching across the horizon through the window, painting the sky that insubstantial blue-black that always comes before the sun burns it away.
All I can think about is Brielle and how badly I've fucked everything up, over and over again. Liam's words replay in my head, growing so loud I can't think through them.
She isn't eating, isn't sleeping, isn't talking.
She's a ghost.
Brielle, who once burned so fucking bright I had to squint to look at her, is a ghost because of me.
That's not what I wanted. I never meant to destroy her entirely. I just wanted to erase the part of her that might ever, even for a second, think about letting me back in.
All the righteous bullshit I fed myself about letting her go to save her? It was a lie. This was never about her safety. It was about hiding, about never letting the person I wanted most in this world see what kind of monster was really inside me.
