Page 103 of Xavier

“Can you please not ever do that ever again? I’m in enough pain.”

“You asked for it,” he shrugs.

Yeah. I’d have happily taken more if he hadn’t stuck his fucking nose into my business.

“No. It’s not… all la dee rainbows,” I wave my hand at him. “It…” The memory of her telling me suddenly floods my brain. The images. Her fear, palpable. Her voice cracking. Her eyes filling with shame, sadness, hopelessness. "Oh god, Ram." My heart feels like it's tearing itself open in my chest. I struggle to breathe.

It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.

I should never have let her go alone.

I should have dropped everything and told her I’d go with her to the ends of the earth, wherever she wanted, whenever.

But I didn’t. I sent her here, alone.

Again and again and again… I’ve failed her. I have never been able to protect her, not even from me. What kind of man was I that she thought she had to protect me from her shame?

Not just then, but now. Had I not changed enough, grown up enough, that even now, it took her home being broken into, her life being threatened, before she felt like she could tell me?

“Breathe, man, breathe,” I hear Ram’s voice remind me.

All I can do is shake my head.

The person I loved most in the world, I failed.

I drop my head into my hands, and there’s a deafening pounding in my skull. I couldn’t save her from the past, but I’ll be fucking damned if I ever let anything happen to her from here on out.

I push myself up, this time I couldn’t care less that the world under my feet is crumbling. I’ve going to make this right.

“Where are you going, man?” Ram shouts after me.

To the past, buddy. To the past.