My eyes closed, and I breathed through my nose. Silence filled the gym for a long time before I finally spoke. “I fucked up.”
He hmphed “Yeah, that’s obvious.”
“She hates me.” I could barely get the words past my clogged throat.
“Nah. Lila can’t hate you.”
“Christian was driving the car that night… the night of Lila’s accident, the night her parents…”
Colton paused, mulling over my words. “Christian Carmichael?”
I nodded.
He swore under his breath. “Shit. You knew?”
“I found out a couple of months ago, when I was digging into Lila’s accident. It always bothered me, and I wanted to know, wanted to bring her justice. I found out it was Christian,” I explained.
“Before you two started dating?” he questioned.
“Way before,” I confessed quietly.
Colton swore again. “Lila found out? Oh shit, the gala! Christian!” Colton finally put two and two together.
My chest tightened with a vice grip. “He was there. Lila came face to face with the person who killed her parents, Colton. Do you realize what this means? I did everything to protect her from the truth,” I croaked, my voice barely audible.
“Shit, Maddox. I don’t know what to say.”
“Lila hates me.” Saying the word out loud caused me to almost double over in pain. I hadn’t expected it to hurt this much, but it did. Everything fucking hurt.
“She doesn’t.”
“You weren’t there. You didn’t see the look in her eyes.” The look of pain and disgust. Betrayal and broken trust.
“I should have fought harder, should have stopped her from going to the gala, but she was so goddamn stubborn. I thought I’d be by her side all night, keeping her safe, and away from Christian. I thought we’d be able to leave before anything… I thought…”
I rubbed a hand over my face, so exhausted, so mentally… done. I just wanted to wrap myself around Lila and forget about this chapter. I wanted to turn the pages over and begin anew. “I thought a lot of things, but I still messed up.”
And the worst part of it? Lila didn’t even know half of it.
All my secrets…
If she knew the rest of it…
No. The mere thought of it made me sick.
I wasn’t strong enough to love… and then lose her. Not like this.
Lila was a maze with no escape. Once I had entered the labyrinth that was her, I lost sight of the exit and never bothered to look for it again. I didn’t want to leave the maze. I didn’t want to escape her.
I wanted to stay and bleed at her feet. Because I found what I needed there.
My salvation.
13
Lila
It is said that pain comes in waves. Whether it’s emotional or physical.
The first wave hits you unexpectedly. It’s usually the most dangerous, the harshest wave.
The second wave, you’re ready for it, but it still hurts.
By the third wave, you’ve grown accustomed to it. The pain starts to take shape, to build up inside of you. Under your skin, inside your flesh, buried in your bones, deep in the marrow of you.
And slowly, your body grows numb.
Your mind goes numb.
You live with the pain; it becomes part of you.
The wave came and went. The pain stayed, with an angry stubbornness. The wound festered, oozing puss. The agony grew.
I drowned. I floated. I sunk to the bottom.
My mom always told me to honor the anger, to give pain the space it needed to breathe, to never run away from my emotions… to live and breathe it. This is how you learn to let go, she’d tell me.
But I didn’t know how to let go of the fury coursing inside of me, of the pain that chased me every waking hour and into my nightmares.
A dull throb spread across and around my scars, and I rubbed my chest, trying to alleviate the heavy pressure.
“Lila, you have to eat something.” Riley pushed the plate of pasta in front of me. “Just a few bites.”
The smell of the pasta had bile rising in my throat, and I choked on the sourness. My stomach churned with nausea. Maddox loved pasta. Actually, he loved the pasta I made, and I’d always make it for him, whenever he was feeling down.
I pushed the plate away and stood up. “I’m not hungry.”
“You barely ate anything in the last few days! You’ve already lost weight, babe. Just a few bites, at least,” she tried to reason with me. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”
Riley didn’t understand; she couldn’t. I didn’t want to eat, drink… or sleep.
I just wanted to fade away, to cease to exist.
The gala was four days ago. My world fell apart four days ago, and I still haven’t accepted that fact. How? Why? WHY? I wanted to scream at him.
But I refused to see him, to look into his beautiful face and let him hold me. To feed me his sorry excuses. I knew I’d let him win. I knew I was weak for Maddox.
He’d tell me he was sorry… and I was going to forgive him. He had that kind of power over me, and he proved to be my downfall.
Maddox Coulter was my damnation.
He was a mistake I shouldn’t have made four years ago. I should have never asked him to make that first pinky promise. It was the beginning of the end, as far as I was concerned. That was my mistake. That stupid pinky promise.
Friends?
Friends.
My phone rang, for the fifth time, in the last ten minutes. I glanced at it, even though I already knew who it was going to be. He had been calling me every day.
But today, he seemed especially persistent.
Maddox’s name flashed on the screen, as the call went to voicemail. With an angry wail that sounded like a broken record to my own ears, I tossed the phone at the wall. It bounced and slammed onto the floor, the screen cracking and going black.
The call ended.
The wave came again. It crashed into me, and even though my body had long grown numb to me, it still… hurt. I still drowned, gasping for air, gasping to stay alive.
Riley let out a soft sigh. “You have to talk to him. Just once, Lila. Not for his sake. But for your own. You’re hurting, and you need closure.”
“I don’t want anything from him,” I spat. “There’s no better closure than not seeing his face or hearing his voice.”
Riley walked to where my broken phone laid. She picked it up and handed it to me. “How is this closure?” she asked softly.
My fingers brushed over the fractured screen, and my skin caught on one of the cracks. A tiny prick: a sharp sting, like a paper cut. Blood gathered around the littlest cut. Bleeding.
I fisted my hand, hiding the wound. Oh, how ironic.
Riley grasped my wrist and slowly uncurled my fingers. Her gentle touch skimmed over the cut. “This is not closure, Lila.”
My heart stuttered, and I blinked back the tears. “I can’t hate him. I tried, and I can’t. But I also don’t want to forgive him. I can’t forgive him.”
Maddox’s betrayal cut deep, so deep… there was no way for me to reach it and wrap a bandage on it. I couldn’t stop the bleeding, couldn’t stop the wound festering into something nastier, something more agonizing.