Page 154 of The Ache That Stayed

But as I walked beside her, feeling the way she clung to me like she might fall apart again if I let go, only one thought stayed with me—steady, unrelenting, impossible to ignore.

What happened to her?

And why did it feel like I was already too late?

I led her into the small washroom myself, closing the door behind us, shutting out the noise, the movement, the world that had already started spinning again.

She didn’t resist. Roxanne had never been passive—not with me, not with anyone. But now she moved when I guided her, stopped when I stopped, sat when I told her to. As though the fire inside her had died.

I turned the tap on, the sound of running water filling the space between us. For a moment, I just stood there, watching the red stain her hands, dried and cracked against her skin. Then I reached for her. Slowly. She flinched. It was small—barely there—but I felt it immediately.

My hand paused for a fraction of a second before I continued, gentler this time, guiding her hands beneath the water, letting it run over her skin.

The blood began to loosen, fading slowly. She stared at it as it washed away, like she didn’t quite understand what she was seeing. I reached for a cloth, wet it, and brought it to her face, wiping carefully, clearing the streaks from her cheek, her jaw, the edge of her mouth. She still wouldn’t look at me.

“Roxanne,” I murmured.

No response. Just the sound of her breathing—uneven, shallow, wrong. I tilted her chin slightly, trying to get her to meet my gaze. That was when she broke.

“I hurt you,” she whispered.

The words came out fractured, barely formed. They felt wrong. Not like guilt, but like grief. Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.

“I hurt you… I hurt you…”

Her hands came up suddenly, gripping onto me, unsteady, desperate. For a second, I didn’t understand what she meant. The certainty in her voice shifted the meaning entirely. As though she had already condemned herself for something irreversible, deciding the damage belonged to her.

“Amore—”

Her knees buckled before I could finish. I caught her easily, pulling her against me as her body gave way completely, shaking with a force she could no longer contain.

“I hurt you, and you’ll hate me when you know,” she repeated, her voice cracking further with each word, collapsing into a sob.

“I hurt you—”

“Hey—” I steadied her, one arm around her, the other bracing her weight. “Roxanne—look at me.”

She didn’t. She pressed her face into my chest instead, her fingers clutching at my shirt, tightening like she was trying to hold herself together through me.

“I hurt you,” she whispered again, broken, like she had nothing left behind it.

My jaw tightened from realisation. Because people don’t break like this over mistakes that mean nothing.

“You didn’t hurt me,” I said evenly, my voice controlled despite feeling a dread within. “Whatever happened—we’ll deal with it.”

She shook her head against me, as though my words couldn’t reach wherever she’d gone. Like she had already decided what this was before I ever arrived. I didn’t push. I couldn’t. Not like this.

I stayed there until the shaking eased, until her grip loosened just enough that she could stand again without collapsing.

When she finally pulled back, her eyes still didn’t meet mine. I guided her out, my hand at her back, steadying her as we stepped back into the corridor.

She stopped just outside the door. For a moment, she said nothing.

Then—

“I want to go to Mumbai.”

The words were absolute. She still wasn’t looking at me. Her gaze had fixed somewhere past my shoulder, as though I wasn’t standing right in front of her, as though I had already become something peripheral in her world.