Nothing cuts deeper than loving someone who can’t remember you. Watching her smile at everyone else, hearing their names on her lips while mine is gone like it never existed. Like someone reached into her life and pulled me out, leaving space empty.
People say you have to be strong, that if you love someone, you let them go. Whoever said that never stood where I stand now, never loved like this.
Seventeen years of knowing her just wiped away.
Now all I get is to watch her. To be her shadow in the corner, and a voice on the other end of the line, The Caller. Even when I get close, she gets scared. All I can do is play the part. To be someone who calls, so she can be the one who answers.
She steps away from the mirror and sits on the bed. I notice the white rose I left is still there, resting beside her. She’s holding something in her hands.
A book. No, a notebook.
I’ve never seen her read like this before.
A strand of hair slips loose and falls across her forehead. She huffs softly, blowing it away without looking up. Her fingers press into the page. Her brows mesh together as she scans the lines, like she’s trying to make sense of something. Then she tilts her head.
“Lily, do you think Daniel loved me?”
My gaze snaps around the room.
No one is there.
“Victor said they found bodies,” she says. Her voice is thinner now. “But I keep wondering if they found him. Or if he’s still out there.”
A tear slips down her cheek.
She’s crying over him. Over that asshole?!
My hands curl into fists. I slam one into the wall. The impact shot up my arm, making a dull sound that reached her room.
She gasps, standing up and spinning toward the sound. Her eyes scan the room, trying to find where the sound came from. After a moment, she turns back and sits on the bed, pulling her legs in close.
“A part of me wants him to be alive so I can tell him how I really felt,” she says. Then she turns again, scanning the space around her like someone might answer. “Lily?” she asks the empty air.
She is still thinking about him, and she can’t even remember me?! She remembers the person who made her so miserable and she can’t remember the one she said she loved?! Did she really love me, or did she just want me to feel loved because she owed me for saving her so many times?
My teeth grind together as I take a step away from the mirror.
Anger rises fast in my chest. I’m angry at her for not remembering. Angry at myself for putting her here. If I had let her walk away with him, she would still have her memories of me, but she wouldn’t haveme.
Now she has neither.
The worst part is that I don’t know what else to do to make her remember. I decided to show her the darkest parts of me first. The version I built during the years without her. The one that existed before she came back into my life. Before she could fall for the version of me that came after her. Because right nowthose two versions feel like strangers to each other. And neither of them deserves her. No one does.
I wish she knew that.
And I hope she never learns that I’m the reason she is like this.
The reason she lost her parents.
The reason she lost her memories.
The reason for the scar across her hand that stole the piano from her life.
That night by the rocks, I shoved her out of the way to save her. I pushed so hard that her hand slammed against the stone. One careless moment. One desperate move. And the thing she loved most slipped out of her life forever.
I already broke her.
She just doesn’t know it yet.
