She turns away, but I stay kneeling. I can't get up. It's like my bones have turned to concrete.
"Brielle, wait," I whisper, not really expecting her to do it, but she stops anyway. She doesn't turn around, but she stops.
"It's always been you," I say. "Always. I loved you from the second I met you. The night of the accident, when you told mehow you felt, I wanted to say it back, but I fucking couldn't, not when you weren't even eighteen yet. Not when I knew how fucking wrong it was." I swallow. "I tried so goddamn hard to kill it because you always deserved better than me, but I never could."
She says nothing.
I keep going, because if I stop now, I'll never say it.
"I saw the red light that night," I rasp, my whole fucking body shaking. "I knew the second it turned red, but it didn't matter because you were finally kissing me. For the first time, you were in my arms, and I was bulletproof. I was just daring fate or God or the goddamn universe to try to remove you from them."
She stands there, her hands clenched into fists, her back rigid.
"When I saw the garbage truck, I knew I'd fucked up, but it was already too late. I tried so fucking hard to stop what I knew was about to happen, but I couldn't. Christ, I couldn't," I groan. "I nearly killed you because I was too goddamn selfish to let you go, and I've hated myself for it every day since."
"Good," she says, her voice whisper-quiet. "You should."
"I know," I rasp. "But I hate myself more for what I did to you after. For every time I made you feel like you were less because I couldn't face myself. For every time I taught you to hate me because I thought that would make living with what I did to you easier." I swallow past the lump in my throat. "For telling you to crawl when all I've ever wanted was for you to stand beside me. For every fucking time I hurt you when I was the one who wanted to die."
She doesn't move.
"I thought I needed you to hate me so I could live with what I did to you, but now that you do hate me? Now I know that was never going to work because you're the one thing I can't live without. I don't know how the fuck I'm supposed to forget what I did. But I don't know how to live without you, either. I can't."
"Not my problem," she mutters.
"I'll keep trying to fix this," I tell her, my voice breaking. "Even if it takes the rest of my life."
She turns, finally, and looks down at me. There's nothing in her eyes but exhaustion, as if she cried herself out a long time ago.
"Don't," she says, her voice wooden. "Just leave, Asher. That's what I want from you. Just leave."
The door closes on her face, on her impossible eyes, and I taste the salt of my own tears for the first time in years. But I'm not giving up. No matter how long it takes, I'll fix this. Not because I deserve it, but because she does. Because, out of everyone in this world, she deserves to know love the most.
Chapter Eighteen
Brielle
The door barely has time to close behind me, keeping Asher safely on the other side, when my legs buckle. I collapse, not even trying to catch myself as I hit the floor.
Silence swallows me, the same way it has every day for the last two weeks. I curl in on myself—my knees to my chin and my arms wrapped around myself—like if I just curl tight enough, I'llfinally disappear inside myself, and it'll stop hurting so fucking much.
The first sob is so violent it sounds like I'm choking. The next is a scream muffled by my knees. Tears stream down my face, soaking into the fabric of my hoodie, but I can't seem to stop.
My whole life, I've been told that pain is temporary—cry it out, dust yourself off, keep going, princess. But there's no moving through this kind of pain, no tidying it up for polite company.
I don't even realize I'm wailing his name until my own voice echoes back at me from the high ceiling, broken and raw. Wails and screams blast out of me, one after another, like every time I never let myself mourn or rage or cry has finally caught up with me. They're detonating in sequence now, one by one.
He saw the red light. He saw it. He saw it, and he kept going.
There are words for this kind of betrayal, but I can't form any of them. I just pound my fist against the floor, again and again, until my knuckles throb.
I curl tighter, desperate to disappear. Desperate to hurt him back, but he's not here. All I have left is this agony that just keeps on coming.
He saw the red light.
He saw it. And he let the world end just to have me for one more fucking second.
My parents died in a boating accident, and I've always wondered what the last second of their lives was like. Did they see it coming? Did they have time to regret or make peace with it?
