“Yeah,” I cut in. “I remember.”

“You remember what you said? About how we end all our fights?”

I nodded.

“I need you to end it, Nate,” she cried, moving her hands to my shirt, fisting and tugging harshly. “God, I need you to end it,” she repeated, and so I did, right there on the stairs with a million emotions fleeting between us, I gave her what she needed. I inhaled her cries and let them consume me, I tasted her tears and let them destroy me, I gave in to her pleas and let them control me, and then she did the same with me. We used each other, physically, emotionally, it didn’t matter, because when the pink of her lips spread thin around my cock and my hands fisted her hair, she looked up at me with love and appreciation in her eyes, and for a second, one split second, my heart stopped hurting. Then I was inside her, the sounds of my pain and despair muffled by her neck while she panted, promises and declarations of a forever that didn’t exist whispered into the still, dead air around us. But it wasn’t until it was over, her in my arms and our bodies still connected, drowning in the evidence of our pleasure and pain that reality hit, and hit with a force I couldn’t ignore… our actions hadn’t ended it. If anything, it just restarted the cycle. And I guess she must’ve felt it too because when I woke up the next morning, she wasn’t in our bed, she was on the bathroom floor, and I felt the shift in both our presence, like a tidal wave of doom. For minutes, I just sat there watching her, until she turned to me, her eyes hopeless and tired and then she said the two words that sparked the flames, the two words that ruined me for all of eternity. “Thank you.”

39

Bailey

“Get up!”

My eyes snapped open, and my hand reached out, grabbing the arm of the person shaking me. I knew it wasn’t Nate. Even in the darkness of the room, I could tell.

It wasn’t his voice.

It wasn’t his touch.

Adrenalin pumped through my veins, mixing with my fear and the only thing I thought to do was scream. I turned over in bed, and I screamed and cried for Nate, but he wasn’t there.

Hands grasped my shoulders while a cloth was put over my head, and then the same hands were on my waist, lifting me in the air. My stomach landed on a shoulder, my body folded in half, and I thrashed around, my fists thumping the person’s back while my legs kicked out and I screamed, and I cried for Nate.

Doors opened, doors closed, footsteps thudded across the floor, and I wept, tears falling in all directions. My throat closed up, the shock of fresh air filling my lungs. I heard the thunder, felt the rain on my legs and my back while a car door opened, and I was released, landing harshly on my side and I screamed, and I cried for Nate.

I kicked again, hands pulling the fabric off my head at the same time the engine started. I found the door handle, and I pulled, and I pulled, but it was no use. The car moved, tires spinning against loose gravel and I screamed, and I cried for Nate.

Then I looked out the back window, past the tears and the darkness and the rain and the lighting surrounding me, to Nate’s house, the only light source coming from his open front door, and I banged my fist on the window as I screamed and I cried for Nate.

And then he appeared, the outline of his frame standing in the doorway, and everything in me froze, just for a second, before my mind reeled, and my tears fell, and my heart broke, and I slumped in the seat.

And I cried.

And I cried

For Nate.

Epilogue

Nate

Five years later

“I’d woken up that morning to Bailey sitting naked on the bathroom floor—her thin, pale frame a contrast against the gray of the tiles. She’d been counting, her finger pointed in the air, and her body shaking, and all of a sudden, that ache I had felt tripled in strength, only it hadn’t been because I needed to be with her, needed to feel her in my arms… No, the reasons were worse. A lot worse. Bailey once told me that the only thing she experienced when she pulled the trigger that night I found her was a repeat of the events that led her to where she was. Gunshot. Breath. Darkness. She’d said those three words as if they were all her life meant, but she said she’d been sad that she hadn’t seen her life flash before her eyes. But I had—my life, I mean. That morning, I’d watched Bailey lean forward, her eyes squinting, her lips moving, and her pointed finger slowing, and my heart hurt to the point where I thought I was dying, or maybe I was because it was at that point when my life flashed before my eyes.”

Doctor Aroma looked up from her notepad, her eyes wide. “And what did you see, Nate?”

“Bailey and Hickory.”