"Dagon."
My fingers tightened on the wheel.
"Dagon, look at me."
I didn't.
He let the silence stretch. He waited me out. And when I still didn't turn – when I couldn't, because the wall I'd been building since dawn was the only thing holding me upright – his voice came out lower. Harder.
“Pull the car over,” he said.
“What?” Startled, I looked over at him, then around us. I was worried there might be some danger I didn’t sense.
“Pull the car over. Right. Now.”
I did what he told me. Before I could ask what was wrong, he challenged me with fire in his eyes. Fuck. I had never seen him so pissed off.
The Di I knew curled inward when he was hurt. This Di was something else. Sharp. Lit from within. The fire in his eyes wasn't grief or even pain, it was fury and accusation and being done with my walls.
“What’s your deal?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, really? Do I need to spell it out? Or maybe you need a script translation on what’s happening between us?”
“Diablos.”
“Don’tDiablosme. Since we left on this fucking fantasy journey, you've become someone else. The old you,” pain flashed in his eyes. “No, scratch that. You've become a fantasy in its own right. And now we’re back to how it used to be.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Di.”
“What about the truth? Tell me the fucking truth, Dagon. I beg you.”
I shook my head.
I couldn’t.
I can’t.
“Why did everything change between us? Why did you leave my hospital room and never came back the same? Why did we become this?!” he screamed, and I flinched.
He wasn't done. The dam had broken now and the rest of it was coming.
"I waited for you, Dagon. Do you know that? I waited at your door. I knocked. I sat in the kitchen at midnight every Friday for months because that's what we did. And you didn't come. Not once. You walked past me in our own home like I was furniture. And I let you. I let you because I thought you'd come back to me eventually."
He was breathing hard now, his hands clenched at his sides.
"You held me yesterday. You said don't leave, stay with me. You climbed into my bed last night and held me until I fell asleep on your chest. And now this morning you can't even fucking look at me."
My fingers were white-knuckled on the steering wheel.
"What changed? What did I do? Just tell me. Tell me what I did and I'll spend the rest of my life trying to undo it, because I cannot do this again. I cannot lose you twice."
It would've been better if I'd been stabbed with a knife. Anything would've been better than this. Hell, I wished I could tell him everything. Every fiber of my being was consumed by pain, by the need to answer his questions. I knew I'd hurt him, and it killed me that I was the reason for that pain.
The past crashed through my walls without warning. Flashes of memories swarmed me from every side. The first time we met. Those late-night conversations. The shy smile on his face when he spoke about his books. The moment my world collapsed when I got the call from King telling me Di had been hit by a car. The blur in which I ran to the hospital.
I tried to stop the memories, but they wouldn't let up.
