Page 285 of Satan's Spawn
“What is it?” She blinks.
“I need you to promise you’ll forget about me if I end up doing time. Move on. Live your life the way you intended from the beginning.”
She yanks herself from my embrace, only to stab a finger into my chest. “You don’t get to say that…not when you’ve flipped that entire life upside down.”
“I’m sorry, okay?”
“Well, I’m not.” She shoots back. “I don’t regret a single second…and I’m sure as hell not going to leave you when things get hard. I want this, us, for way longer than any jail sentence.”
Hearing this from her lips stirs something inside me, like slain emotions rising from the dead, taking hold of me and pulling me down.
It feels like falling standing still.
Yet here I am, still trying to convince her to go.
“You’re not thinking clearly. Not realizing the gravity of what you’re saying.” I press on her shoulders, shaking them slightly. “You’re a smart as fuck eighteen year old girl with endless possibilities. Doors will be flying open for you, Rebecca.” I let her go and take a step back. “They won’t be opening for me.”
And her waiting around for a convict to maybe or maybe not get out of prison will take all of that away.
Rebecca deserves so much fucking better than that.
The glitz, the glamor, the graduations, the surprise of getting engaged. Having a big fancy wedding and a bunch of kids.
Not being stuck behind partitions for date night, where the closest we’ll come to touching is our hands pressed against some plexiglass.
Freedom doesn’t mean anything to me.
But it does to Rebecca.
Because she’s meant for so many bigger things.
She doesn’t realize it yet, but one day she will. She’ll be grateful she didn’t settle for the broken boy she tried to fix in high school.
“I am thinking clearly. If you go down, I want to be the one breaking your fall. It’s who I am. Who I’ve always been.” She looks down at her feet, visibly uncomfortable. “I know you don’t love me, Crayton, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take in case one day you do.”
A punch to the fucking throat. That’s what those words feel like…and they make the saliva I’m swallowing burn like acid.
“Fuck, Rebecca. You can’t say shit like that when I’m about to lose you.”
“So don’t lose me. Fight for me.”
It’s my turn to stare down at the ground. “I’ll always fight for you, Little Ghost, you know that.”
“So prove it.” She says, turning desperate. “Or else I’m marching up to that stand and telling the world what really happened that night in the Pit. Telling them what Felix did to me and how everything you did to him was through a fit of rage.” Her eyes bounce back and forth, turning frantic. “Then I’ll tell them how it couldn’t have been you who killed him with your knife because it was fuckingme.”
Regardless of the chances of that actually working being slim to fucking none, the fact she’s even suggesting it is enough to send me into a tailspin.
“You will not relive the terrible shit he did to you in a room full of strangers. Not for a selfish motherfucker like me.”
Rebecca intertwines her arms over her chest. “Says the selfless motherfucker willing to go to jail for the rest of his life so his girlfriend doesn’t have to feel the pain of rehashing her trauma.”
I pick up a calculator on my desk and launch it across the room. “Romanticizing the shit I say isn’t going to help your cause!”
“But telling the world the truth may!” She picks up a notebook, throwing it in the same direction. “So stop handling me with kid gloves and let me try to help you.”
“It’s not a fucking option, Rebecca.”
“So, what, I’m not good enough to speak on your behalf, or good enough to spend the rest of your life with?”
