What do you say to someone that kind?
She deserves so much more than this. More than silence. More than half-sentences and guilt and apologies that won't fix anything. Anything I could give her would still come up short. She deserves the whole world, and I'm trapped in a tiny box with nothing but regret and borrowed time.
I'm a lost soul.
And the worst part is that she still makes me want to try.
I can only manage to write one word.
Olivia,
That's all I've got. That's all I can give her right now, and even that feels like too much. Like I'm already reaching for something I don't deserve to touch.
My hand tightens around the pen until my fingers hurt.
I keep thinking about the look on her face that day. That sits in my chest like a brick. Because she didn't deserve that. She never did.
The last words I said to her were cruel.
"You don't fucking care. Stop lying to yourself. You're just a piece of shit like everyone else."
That's what she heard from me. That's what I gave her.
I tossed her aside after she told me the truth and admitted how she felt. After she said she loved me. After she wanted to be with me. She told me the truth and I punished her for it. I made her regret being honest with me. I made her feel like loving me was some kind of mistake.
I swallowed it all and spat out something ugly instead.
I drag a hand down my face and stare at the page again, my vision blurring at the edges. There's no fixing this. No cleanapology. No perfect sentence that can make up for the fact that I took something beautiful and treated it like it was nothing.
And still, I want to write her name again. I want to tell her I remember everything. The way her voice softened when she said my name. The way her hand felt in mine. The way I almost let myself believe I could have something good for once, something real, something that didn't come with blood on it.
But that's the problem.
I almost believed it too late.
Now she's out there somewhere with a life I don't belong in, and I'm in here trying to figure out how to say goodbye without making it sound like I'm still asking her to wait. Because I know myself. I know what happens when I get selfish. I know what happens when I start wanting things I can't keep.
And I want her.
God, I want her so badly it feels like hunger. But wanting her isn't the same as giving her anything. It isn't love if all I do is drag her into my ruin.
I press my lips together and write another line, then cross it out before I can even read it.
Too much.
I write a different one.
Too little.
Everything I try turns rotten in my hands.
So I sit there in the dim cell with the notebook open on my lap, trapped between what I feel and what I can survive saying, and for the first time it occurs to me that maybe the cruelest thing I've ever done wasn't pushing her away.
I look down at what I've got so far.
Olivia,
I need you.
