Page 43 of Never To Suffer

“Whoever told you that this whole game you play of tough guy until you get your ass beat was a good idea, lied. I’m evengoing to guess you come from money, because this trauma screams boarding school. Also, mommy and or daddy didn’t love you enough.”

“They were fine, they—” I can’t finish the sentence because he’s hugging me to his chest.

“You deserve better thanfine, Xander.” He whispers it against my ear, rocking me back and forth on the floor of the kitchen like a child.

I don’t need to be treated like a child, and if this is some weird kink he’s into, I’m out. I try to twist out of his hold, but I can’t, I’m stuck there.

“You deserve better,” he repeats, but slower this time. “When was the last time someone held you, Xander? Told you they’d keep you safe? They’d keep you warm and protect you?” He stresses each word, ensuring I understand. Giving me no alternative but to search for the answer to his question.

Dani. The only one who ever cared about me, the only person who ever fought for me. But even she’s never said it out loud. The switch he’s been aiming for the whole time clicks.

The struggle stops, and my whole body goes limp. I don’t have more tears to give this, not right now, so instead I shake in his arms. Rage, sadness, loneliness, all of it comes together when I can’t answer him.

CHAPTER 20

SOME NIGHTS

FUN.

The sun shines on my face, warm and inviting. I’m coming back from checking out the last venue on our list, and I’m already planning the table layout in my head because this is the place. I’ve found the venue where we’re getting married. Tomorrow, we’re going cake tasting, which Steve hasn’t shut up about since he proposed. I’m going to make him taste every fucking flavor they have until he’s sick of cake.

There’s a flash. My bike drags sideways across the pavement, taking me with it. Metal screaming as it bends and twists to the breaking point. The world goes from sky to blacktop and back again. Searing pain starts in my arm and moves to my legs. Everything goes black. Someone screams; something burns. Opening my eyes, heat slices through my body and everything tastes like copper. I’m not alone. Glass crunches somewhere near my head. Why won’t they stop screaming?

“Skylar?Baby, wake up. It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

I struggle to cling to the painful memories as Dani tries to wake me, but I’m losing them. I always lose them.

I don’t remember Steve proposing to me, or anything else that happened in the eight months before I woke up in the hospital with pins in my arm and a tube down my throat. The doctors said my memories could come back. Spoiler alert, they didn’t. Since it also meant I didn’t remember how they found me, some people called it a blessing in disguise. Except I dream about it. I wake up with those last thoughts in my mind, with my heart racing and sweat soaking the sheets. Sometimes I cry, begging some non-existent sky dick to give me back what I lost. Sometimes I sit there for hours, staring at my hand and tracing the lines of the scars because I can’t remember what I’ve lost.

Surviving has proven worse than remembering the pain of the collision, because even though I lost time and the use of my arm, I still remember the way I lost Steve and the pain I caused him, no matter how hard I tried.

I watched the video our friend Jamie shot of Steve proposing to me over and over. I watched it day after fucking day. I listened to stories of my life like a bystander, not an active participant. I hung pictures of us everywhere, so I had to see them no matter where I looked. I touched the clothes we were going to wear, visited the venue we’d picked, and struggled through months of therapy—physical and mental. No matter what, I couldn’t outrun the emptiness and rage. Love and tears of joy on the screen made the hole inside me bigger, deeper, until it became impossible to fill, no matter how hard Steve tried.

He understood.

I caused his heart to break, and he never blamed me. He accepted the pain and all of my rage. He did nothing wrong—at least not that I could remember—but he took the brunt of the fallout. I gave up on myself, on us, and on him, and he accepted that fate. I couldn’t find what we’d had together no matter how hard I tried, and he’s the one who told me we couldn’t force it or fake what wasn’t there.

That’s the pain I wake up to and the reason I self-medicated for so long. Today, though, I remembered something new. Someone new.

“Hey, come back to me.” Her voice brings me back slowly as she wraps around me, cradling me like an infant. “Can you do that? Can you focus on me? On my voice.”

It’s the voice that’s pulled me out of the unending nightmare before, but this time, I’m not in a hospital. This time, it’s not a recording. She’s real.

“Dani?” I reach out and touch her face, letting my fingers trace the edges of smudged eyeliner and feeling the corner of my mouth tick up. It’s as unfamiliar as my memories, but much more welcome.

“I forgot how bad your nightmares get, Skylar. What happened?”

I bury my face in my hands, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and the thoughts from my mind. I can’t burden her with this now, not after all these years. “I drank too much. Sorry I scared you, Beetle.”

“Is this really how you want to start off?” I lift my head and stare up at her, and as stern as she’s trying to act, the smeared makeup forces a laugh out of me. So, I sit up and cup her angelic face in my hideous hands to drink in more of her soul. She melts to my touch, and I slide between her legs, burying my head in the crook of her shoulder as I rock back and forth. I move faster when she begs me to, harder when she screams a name I never knew could sound so angelic. My name. We ascend together, a chorus of my beastly grunts and her ethereal moans reaching its crescendo before gradually returning the world. Two people, wrapped in hotel sheets the staff should burn after we leave.

After I clean us both up, tossing the towel onto the floor of the bathroom, I grab my cigarettes and head for the balcony. Before I can step outside, she’s wrapping a towel around mywaist while I pull her in for another kiss. And another. Until we fall together into a chair.

“Hold on,” she giggles. “Wait, I gotta ask you something stupid.”

“Okay, ask.”

“Uhm, when did you get the, uhh, you know.” She shifts and moves the towel away, staring at my cock. “Those.”

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