“Go away.”
“Please, Sarah. Please. Don’t. Do. This.”
“It’s too late,” I whispered. I would break any second. I didn’t want to break in front of him. It was killing me. It was killing me being so close to him, yet so far away. We were never actually close. We would never be.
“Once upon a time, Hayden, I wanted to give my all for you. You lost your chance. Please, get out.”
The door opened, and the nurse came in. She was about to say something to me, but she halted when she spotted Hayden, frowning in confusion.
“What are you doing here? You aren’t allowed to be here after visitation hours.” He didn’t even acknowledge her, looking at me with red eyes, all muscles of his body tense. Everything hurt in me, and I was so close to losing it. So close...
“Do you hear me? You are not allowed here. If you don’t leave the room right this second, I will call security and they will—”
“No need,” he answered in a raspy voice. His teary eyes were still on me. “I’ll leave.” He spun around and stormed out of the room.
The nurse approached me. “I came as soon as I received your call. How are you feeling?”
I wasn’t even paying attention to her, beginning to lose myself in all the pain. Everything exploded in me, and the tears, hurt, loneliness, and pain made me blind and deaf. It was suffocating, pulling me further into the depths of nothingness, and the anguish was quickly getting out of control, taking its reign over me.
I just wanted to forget everything and be free. I wanted to forget Hayden ever existed. I wanted him gone from my heart.
It was impossible, though.
He was in my core, and like a deadly disease, he was here to stay until the very end.
Chapter 30
I HAD A MAJOR BREAKDOWN last night, and the messages from Jessica, Melissa, and Mateo were the only bright spots and sources of strength this morning. The nurse had tried to calm me down, but I’d been far beyond gone, losing myself in the avalanche of pain after Hayden left.
How could losing someone I never had hurt so much? I wanted to be far away from him for so long, but now I was seriously losing my mind trying to accept the fact that no matter what, we couldn’t be together.
My heart wouldn’t listen, though. It ached whenever I replayed our kiss or his tender words in my head...
In the end, the nurse had to give me something to put me to sleep. My mother visited me after I woke up this morning, but she was tipsy, making everything worse.
Her daughter was in the hospital after she almost got killed, but that didn’t have any effect on her. She was the same old Patricia Decker, who couldn’t bring herself to care about her child. I didn’t know why she even bothered visiting me.
Her indifference always pained me, and I could never make heads or tails of whether I was a good enough daughter for her or not. I tried to be as convenient for her as possible, but that didn’t change anything.
As she stood next to my bed in this sterile white hospital room, barely speaking to me, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d ever really loved me. She left my room shortly after she arrived, which only reinforced the emptiness in me. It was too much.
I decided to focus on something else so I wouldn’t sink deeper into this surrounding gloom. A glimmer of hope perfused me at the thought of my new-found friends who were going to visit today, and I couldn’t wait to see them. At least I had them. Yes, it was fresh and fragile, but those fragments of joy could lead to better days. If I chose to be positive about this, I was off to a good start.
Suddenly, the door of my room flew open, yanking me out of my thoughts. My breathing halted when I spotted Natalie, who looked like she’d had a rough night. Her long hair was greasy and unkempt, her wan face free from any makeup. What was she doing here?
She closed the door and approached me without taking her dead eyes off of me, and everything in me tensed with the need to get away from her. She didn’t look sane.
“What are you doing here?”
She’d wanted to kill me, and now that Josh was in jail, did she come here to do it herself?
“Don’t think you’ll get away with everything you’ve done.”
Excuse me? “I think I’m the one who’s supposed to say that. Josh and you wanted to kill me!”
She stopped too close to my bed, her hand clutching the strap of her purse too tightly, and the hairs on my neck stood up. “You deserve to die, murderer.”
Despite my fear, I was livid. It was like everything she’d done to me wasn’t enough. She actually had no shame, appearing here and saying these horrible words to me. “You’re the murderer. You accuse me of something you were planning to do to me.”
“With a reason! I loved him!” she screamed, and I flinched, terrified by the amount of hate she held in her. “You have no idea how devastating his death was for me. He meant everything to me! He saved me when I needed saving in more ways than you can ever imagine. If I hadn’t had him, I would’ve killed myself a long time ago.”
I shivered, shocked by her words. Only now, I noticed how terribly skinny she was, her T-shirt and jeans too baggy on her small frame. She was wasting away.
“Natalie, I understand that he meant everything to you and that—”
“No, you don’t understand! How could you ever understand? You weren’t the one who had to see the love of her life look at another girl as if she was his everything. You weren’t the one who lost that love because of some stupid girl!”
A fresh wave of guilt hit me, but I refused to let it rule over me. She was a victim here too, but this didn’t justify her lunacy.
“You can’t possibly understand how it feels to lose the only person you will ever love. And I won’t be satisfied until you pay.”
“But we’re in the hospital,” I tried to reason with her. “If you do anything, you won’t be able to get away with it. There are cameras and—“
“I don’t care about the stupid cameras or if I’m going to get caught.”
She was now maliciously hovering over me, and I had to figure out how to defend myself. I still felt a dull pain everywhere, and since I’d been lying for days, my legs were sluggish. I reached for the nurse call button and was about to press it, but she snatched it away from me.
“You won’t get away this time, Sarah. That stupid Josh failed, but I won’t. I’ll kill you.”
“You aren’t a killer, Natalie. It won’t bring Kayden back.”
“It won’t bring him back, but justice will finally be served. For three years, I’ve been watching you get away with everything. I’m sick of you playing innocent, twisting everyone around your little finger. First Kayden and now Hayden. I thought he was smarter. I thought he would avenge Kayden, but after I saw you two kissing at Kayden’s grave, I understood you managed to trick him too. You managed to make him fall in love with you too, you disgusting bitch!”
Before I could react, she grabbed my neck with her hands and squeezed hard, cutting off my air supply. At the same time, the door opened, and Mateo appeared on the threshold with Melissa and Jessica behind him. Noticing Natalie, he dropped a bouquet of flowers he’d been carrying and bolted toward us. He restrained her all too easily and pulled her away from me, too strong for her, but she was still putting up a fight.