The tears come hard and fast now though. The tears take turns with the desperate rage I feel when they’re not falling. The rain beats outside, and it feels like the sky is also crying. I can’t believe she wanted to dance in it. There’s nothing magical or healing about this rain. There’s only pain.
The thick, bountiful tears fall from the sky and pour and pound into the earth as the storm increases.
And still, it doesn’t match the storm that’s raging inside of me. I’ve repeatedly given this girl my past, my present, and my hope for a future. And what she returned to me has been nothing but a lie.
I would rather have never reunited with her, than found her and lost her like this.
As soon as I have that thought though, I know that I’m the one lying now. What I feel for Valentina is desperate, it’s dark. It’s obsessive in a way that I can’t comprehend having for anyone else.
I would rather experience pain forever and have even a second with her, than never see her at all.
I’m a rich man. I’m a rich man who has connections, who has influence. And nothing I’ve accomplished in my life can make a difference in the most important thing that’s ever happened in my life.
Eric would have been ashamed of the man I have become.
I drag myself off the couch, suddenly desperate to see the object of my obsession. Fear strikes through my heart at the thought that, somehow, she’s passed while I’ve been out here throwing the world’s biggest pity party.
I weave my way through the furniture, knocking over a lamp as I try to get to her door that I think I remember Logan disappearing through earlier.
He’s always been the first one to come to his senses. I’m jealous of him at the same time as loving him for that.
He’s going to have to share though. I need all of her remaining moments.
They’ll be my last remaining moments too. The man I am today will cease to exist the second that she stops existing.
I know I should want to do something to make her proud. I should want to work harder, win the next Super Bowl for her so that I can dedicate the win to her memory, solve world hunger…
But that’s all complete bullshit. The best thing I’ve ever done, the only thing that matters that I’ve ever done, is to love Valentina with every ounce of my heart and soul.
It wouldn’t matter what else I did in life, it would never measure up to that.
The only father that ever meant something to me, told me as much.
And I vowed I would never fail her. That I would love her forever.
Even in death.
Carter
I always knew that my humanity hung by a thread. That the only thing preventing me from descending into the darkness growing up had been Valentina’s light.
I’d survived through the long years without her. I can’t call it living, because nothing about my experience resembled living. It was just not dying.
But now, faced with the death of the one person responsible for my soul, my humanity slips away.
I wake up from a blackout, being hauled outside a bar by two black shirt clad bouncers. They’re covered in scrapes that look suspiciously like they were inflicted by human fingernails, and one of them has a swollen eye that’s starting to bruise.
It takes me a moment to understand what’s happening. It’s only when they throw me to the ground and one of them kicks me solidly in the gut that I remember what happened.
I’d gone into the bar down the street, and I’d begun drinking for hours. The bartender had tried to cut me off, but I’d thrown the contents of my entire wallet at him and he’d backed off. I’d sat there, drink after drink, shot after shot. And when someone had bumped me on their way to the bathroom, I’d lost my mind.
The guy who’d bumped me had outweighed me by at least fifty pounds, but it didn’t matter. I’d reared back and punched him in the face. He’d flown backwards and crashed into a table, staring up at me with a mix of fury and shock once he recovered.
He’d jumped up to come at me, and all hell had broken loose. My knuckles were bloody and swollen from the punches I’d thrown. My lip was swollen and bloody from where I’d gotten a left hook from one of the guy’s friends. I was lucky that the police hadn’t been called, based on the damage I’d left behind.
“Crazy, fucking American,” the one bouncer spits out disgustedly, after he gives me another kick for good measure. If I don’t start spitting up blood because of ruptured organs, I’d be surprised, based on the pain clenching at my stomach.
I can barely see out of one of my eyes, thanks to another fist to the eye. I’d given as good as I could, considering that I’d drank more alcohol over the last four hours than I had in my entire life.
I groan as I push up from the ground, pretty sure by the smell that I’ve been thrown in a puddle of piss.
I stagger down the alleyway behind the bar, clenching my stomach and side with gritted teeth. I think I’ll add broken ribs to the list of injuries I’ve sustained today.
Somehow, I make it back to the hotel. I ignore the shocked gasp from one of the female attendants at the check-in desk that had tried to flirt with me when we were checking in.
It seemed like a lifetime ago when I politely told her “Go fuck yourself,” after leveling a kiss on Valentina that left stars in her eyes. Did that really happen? It seems like a dream, the feeling of bliss that I’d had just a few days ago.
And now…now I am destroyed.
The hotel room is dark and quiet when I step inside. It’s impossible for me to be all the way quiet, since I’m seeing double, but I try my best as I make my way towards Valentina’s room. A room that I’d made love to her in, just yesterday morning.
She’s lying there in the bed, Logan and Quaid beside her like two sentries. All three of them are fast asleep.
I creep closer to the bed, just to make sure that her chest is still rising and falling. Just to make sure that she’s still here with me.
She’s so fucking beautiful.
I must be cursed. I’ve lost everyone that I’ve ever cared about in my life. Losing my parents and my grandma a few years later was awful, but losing her? Losing the one person that I care about more than I care about myself, more than I care about anything? That feels like my own death sentence being handed out to me.
I might as well throw myself off the balcony right now. As if pulled forward by a string, I crawl up on the bed and curl up at her feet, not wanting to be away from her any longer.
I’m furious with her. I hate the fact that she’s hidden this huge, awful thing. I hate that she’s going to go somewhere that I can’t find her.
But I understand. At least now, after finding the bottom of a bottle and getting into a bar fight, I understand. If she’d told us from the beginning, we wouldn’t have healed the way that we have.
And even though I feel like I’ve been cut open and left out to die right now, I also can acknowledge that reuniting with her and the men that I once considered brothers…it did heal something in me.
If she had told us, we wouldn’t have Spain, we wouldn’t have Greece, we wouldn’t have Florence.
Like I said, I get it.
I get as close to her as I can manage, considering the fact that Logan and Quaid are so close they could smother her, and I watch her chest rise and fall, the movement temporarily soothing the ache that’s taken over my whole body.