"You did hurt me." I tell him. "Trying to kill yourself? Leaving me behind when you're everything to me? That hurts."
He blinks slowly and then scratches a word on the notepad.
Everything?
"Everything." I agree. "I wanted to go back to the way things were before because I don't know how to let someone else be everything to me. But, Cal... what you did before I knew you?"
His eyes fall.
"That wasnevermy problem. From the start, my problem wasn't what you did... it was the way it made me feel. My body loved you before I did, and maybe that part was some weird kind of Stockholm syndrome. Maybe it was survival, or maybe it was because no matter what you did to me, you came back and kept me safe. I didn't think that I could trust myself around you because of it,so I ignored what it was. When you told me you loved me, I thought it was just that you'd grown attached to me, not that youlovedme."
"I—" His voice is a wheeze, a whisper. It sends chills down my spine, across my arms.
"Stop!" I shake my head. "You could damage your voice."
"love—" The word crackles in the middle and sounds more like 'luh'.
"Cal!"
"You."
His voice is strained, faint. It's so unlike him; I want to cry. I want to mourn, because even though he's alive, he thought I'd be better off without him.
That couldn't be further from the truth.
"I love you." I draw up to him and shake my head. "I love you, and I forgive you. For anything, for everything. But I need to say this now, because I need you to know..."
His eyes search mine in earnest, like he's waiting for me to condemn him.
"What you did? Trying to end your life? That hurts way worse than anything you've done."
It hurts in a different way than everything before it.
I surrendered my anger without even realizing that I had. I guess Dex's words got through to me one way or another. Now I'm left with a heavy heart... one that can be unburdened in time.
"The thought of waking up to find you gone? It—" I clutch my chest because I can't even get the words out around the ache there. It radiates to my lungs, making it hard to breathe.
He holds his arms open for me, and I decide I'm done punishing him.
I climb back in the bed with him and bury my face against his chest, and he wraps his arms around me, caging me in comfort.
We share the silence so long I think he may have fallen asleep.
We share the silence so long, I think I may have.
But as I feel his warmth beneath me, I realize there's one last thing that needs to be said.
"If you ever try to leave me again, I'll slit your throat for you. And you know I don't miss."
Epilogue
Cal
I believe her when she tells me she'll slit my throat if I try to leave her again.
And I don't blame her.
When she first asked me to sedate her and turn her into my little doll, I was so focused on doing what I'd promised that it didn't even occur to me that she was leaving me. Maybe not in the way that I tried to leave her. She was going to leave me with her body, sure, but she was going to take away the part of her that I enjoy most.
