I hold up a hand. “I don’t… I don’t want to hear it. Please.” My voice, for once, is frail.
He doesn’t stop moving toward me, gripping my waist and holding me in front of him like he’s afraid I’ll run. “Where’s my collar? Huh?”
“Was this to humiliate me? To carve me open in front of everyone so they’d see I was nothing to you? Was it revenge, Aiden? Because if it was? Congratulations. You didn’tjusthurt me. You split me in two. Youbrokeme.”
That’s when I can’t hold back the tears any longer. My face screws up, and I release all the agony from years of not being with him. The hopes I had for a different life. The delusions we could make one together. But I was so. So very stupid.
And now I’m bitter.
My heart shatters until I’m no longer moving air in my lungs. The pain is almost unbearable.
Aiden cracks. Liquid lines his lower lids, but it can’t be tears. Because he doesn’t feel anything.
“Baby girl, I’m going to get out of it, I swear. I have to make them think I’m compliant, but I’m working on?—”
I squirm to get by, my vision blurred with unrelenting tears. My body hums with the torment of his words.
“You don’t get to leave me,” he snarls, slamming me back, but the edge fractures into a plea. His mouth drags against my neck, desperate, trembling. “Don’t do this. Don’t walk away. Please…Ashlyn. Please.”
But all I do is sob.
He grips my neck and lifts my face. Tears flow off my cheeks onto his hand as I try to breathe.
“Don’t stand there. Damn it!Fightme! Claw me, cut me, tear me apart. It’s who you are. That’s whoweare. Anything but this silence. Anything but you walking away.”
“No.”
Because I can’t. My limbs hang like lead at my sides. There’s nothing left for me here. Every dream I had for a future of happiness, ofsafety, has been ripped from me.
Wild eyes search my face as he chokes on a guttural cry. “Please! Don’t go silent. Don’t give up on me. Rip me apart, baby girl...”
“I ruined it. I’m…sorry. I shouldn’t have come back. I should’ve left you alone.”
What was I thinking? That he couldloveme again? After what I did?
I was sonaïve.
“That’s bullshit! Fucking bullshit!” Eyes wide and searching, his cheeks flame brighter with emotion as he drops to his knees in front of me, gripping my waist. “Fine. I admit it. You’re it. The only fucking thing that’s ever mattered to me, and it’s tearing me apart from the inside out. Do you get that? You’rekillingme, Ashlyn.”
Swallowing back a lump in my throat, I look him solidly in the eyes and tell him through a ravaged heart, “I’m not angry anymore.”
I’m just…hollow.
I slip by his collapsing figure and walk out the door.
twenty-eight
Witnessing someone you ache for—someoneyou shouldn’t—walk away is the worst kind of torture. Punches. Cuts. The counselor’s belt. Losing a fight. Losing control. Even death. None of it comes close to the suffering of watching her leave me. And the sickest part?
I have to pretend it doesn’t matter.
My head buzzes with something that’s probably what others callfailure. It rarely happens to me. I thought…Fuck!Maybe somewhere inside, I thought I could be done with this appointment before Ashlyn ever found out. That I could own her, cage her, andkeepher for myself before I’d have to go through with this.
I lean over the sink, lungs straining like they’ve been filled with smog. Splash water on my face. Lukewarm, useless. Towel’s scratchy, like sandpaper. Nothing soothes.
I’d welcome a bullet. Bamboo shoots under my fingernails. Anything that hurts enough to quiet this. But instead, it comes crashing over me—a tsunami of apathy, threatening to drag me under until I can’t feel a damn thing.
Steeling myself, I wrench open the bathroom door. Hailey’swaiting on the other side, wide-eyed, wringing her hands. She looks worried. And like the perfect victim for my next murder.