Page 43 of Falling Into Forever
His gaze sears my skin, and I fight against the memories floating in his electric blue depths.
No. No.
His mere presence can suck me into his vortex. He doesn’t even need to try, and that’s why I couldn’t let him love me. He was always happiness and sunshine with a side of mischief, and all I had to offer was gray, bleak sadness. Now, I can’t even offer him that. I’m just…empty.
“Saylor.” His lips move, but the words sound distorted. They hit me like the roar of a thunderstorm, but without the rain to soothe me. Blinking rapidly, I try to focus on his lips as he speaks. “So many mistakes,” he says. A chill grabs me and seeps all the way to my bones. “So many misunderstandings…”
My body shivers, and my teeth clatter. The rapid click, click, click drowns out the rest of what he’s saying. Memories pass through my mind like postcards, each one more painful than the last. And in my head, I hear Dante begging me not to do this. Not to end us. Not to be so cruel. Not to lie.
Ainsley wraps a blanket around my shoulders and guides me to the back room through the fog settling over my existence. She leads me to our grandmother’s old armchair. It’s bigger than a chair but not as big as a loveseat, and I curl into it just like I did as a child.
Just like I didthen.
Dante crouches down so we’re eye to eye, and all the fears I’ve tried to avoid are swimming in his. This is what I didn’t want for him. More memories try to break my solitude, but I fight and push them down as far as they’ll go.
This. This is why I can’t keep him. When the sadness comes, I’ll only drag him into the dark, and he deserves all the happiness the world has to offer him. He won’t get that with me. He can’t, because I’m not strong enough to do it for myself yet, and I refuse to be the one to snuff out his sunshine.
His heavy hand brushes the sweaty hair away from my face, and I breathe in through my nose to keep from hyperventilating.
“Give her a minute,” Ainsley says from somewhere within the room. I can’t tell where she is because everything is spinning and unfocused.
He angles his face toward my sister’s voice, but his gaze never leaves mine, I feel it. He covers me with his warmth, and I fight hard to focus on their words.
“Why did I listen to her?” Dante’s voice is a choked sob, and guilt takes purchase when too many emotions claw their way to the surface of my mind. I’m not strong enough to fight them off all at once.
“She didn’t give you a choice. We didn’t know what to do,” she says. There’s a commotion in the store, followed by the soft click of a door closing, but I’m paralyzed in memories I’ve tried so hard to forget. “You did what she asked, Dante.”
“I shouldn’t have listened.” Leaning forward, he gently places his lips on my forehead, and a single tear rolls down my cheek. “I should have come back. But I’m here now, Sayl. I’m sorry it took me so long.”
He continues to stroke my hair as I count, breathe, and count again. Into my throat for one—to my chest for two—to my belly for three, and release.
“Why did you come back, Dante?” Ainsley asks.
I’m still fighting through my anxiety attack, but my ears narrow in on that question.
He’s not back for good. He can’t be. Silence descends as we stare at each other, and when the seconds drag into long minutes, I push myself to sit and call on all my strength. I don’t fall apart anymore. Not anymore—I can’t.
I see his answer before he says it—he knows I lied.
“I readApril RainandCome September,” he says quietly. “Lena read them first and then threw them at me. She told me not to leave my office until I’d finished.” He cups my cheeks and stares so intently that I’m sure he’s reading every secret I’ve ever kept from him in my irises. “You wanted me to come back.”
It’s not a question. It’s my truth. I shrug because doing anything else feels too monumental right now. When he didn’t come back, I convinced myself it was for the best. It’s what was right, and I was doing it for him. Somewhere along the line, it became my truth.
“You made me leave because youthoughtit was best for me.” His words are harsh but full of conviction. “But you never fucking asked me, Saylor. You made all the choices and broke me in the process. You told me you couldn’t love me anymore because I’d always be a reminder that your sister’s death was our fault.Our fault. It wasn’t even close to being our fault, but I’ve lived with the guilt and heartache of knowing you believed that shit for six long years while you’ve been here doing—what? Living half a life?”
Ainsley gasps, and nausea rolls through me in waves. I don’t remember saying any of that to him. I only remember the scathing letter he sent me a week later telling me he would always love me, but he’d never be able to forgive me. It was a goodbye letter filled with the pain and anger of someone who lost the love of their life and needed them to hurt too.
And I understood why he wrote it, even if I didn’t remember the words I used to push him away.
I deserved it. And I carry his words with me every single day.
“Hello?” someone calls from the front of the old house.
“I—I’ll go,” Ainsley says. “It’s probably the movers.”
Dante nods, but I don’t have the energy to even move. Every muscle in my body aches with the tension that’s been holding me together all these years. When a tremor shakes my body, I will myself to fight harder, to not break, but it’s a battle I can’t win.
“The only person to blame for Shannon’s death is Benjamin. He intentionally ran her off the road that night. He is the only one at fault, and he will pay for his stupidity for the rest of his life.”
