Page 44 of Falling Into Forever
Benjamin—Shannon’s almost father-in-law. My body shudders, and the taste of bile fills my mouth.
“Talk to me, Saylor.” He cups my cheek with the softest of touches.
I close my eyes and sink into his warmth even though I should pull away from him. Nothing’s changed, but his caress is a comfort I can’t give myself. And if I tell him the truth or about the darkness that controls me, he’ll stay out of a sense of duty, and then he’ll resent me.
It’s taken six years, but with intensive therapy and constant work, I’ve come to terms with it—that the shadows I live with will always be hiding in the dark corners of my mind, just waiting for their time to return.
He wears his heart on his sleeve so full of timeless love and hope that it breaks me. If he pushes, I won’t be strong enough to lie to him again.
“It won’t change anything,” I whisper.
His warm lips land on my cheek, and his deep exhale ghosts across my skin. When he drops his forehead to mine, his words are my undoing.
“You’re wrong, sweetheart. It’ll change everything.”
My stomach clenches, and I dry heave, but he still doesn’t pull away. If anything, he holds me tighter. He protects me. He loves me even though I don’t deserve it.
I try to shake my head, but he holds my cheeks gently, lovingly, in his palms. “But it can’t change everything. It can’t. I can’t. I won’t.” The words break on a sob that is sure to open the floodgates of my pain.
“Tell me, Saylor. At the very least, I deserve your honesty, don’t you think?” Each word he speaks sounds more pained than the last.
My chin trembles.
“Tell me.” He pleads against my skin as his heartbeat drums dramatically in his throat. “Talk to me, baby. Please.”
I should have known he’d penetrate my armor. I shouldn’t have agreed to this. But it’s his final words that rip me open and leave me bare.
“I need to know that we were real.” His voice cracks and my eyes snap open. “I need to know that you loved me as much as I love you. That’s what’s tearing me up inside, Saylor. Our love was real, I felt it. But…” His face crumples, and every ounce of pain I’ve caused this man breaks through my chest like a bullet. He’s blowing the plexiglass wall I’ve built around my heart wide open.
It is real, I want to scream. But the fact that he thinks my love is past tense crushes my vocal cords. In my head, we’re still real. In my head is where we’ll always be real, but it can only ever be a dream. I won’t ruin him because I’m too selfish to let him go.
God, please help me. Please. Please don’t let me hurt him again. Please make this pain in my chest go away or take me away from here now. This is a pain I’m not strong enough to survive without ruining everyone I love. I know I’m not. I never have been, and that’s why we’re both hurting now, but he doesn’t deserve to carry my broken soul.
He watches me with a determination that bleeds his feelings through his tears, begging me to say something—begging me to be honest. But it’s the torment in those tears that forces me to talk.
“I broke, Dante.” My words are no more than a whisper, but his fingers flex on my cheeks, and after a breath, he slowly pulls back enough to study my face. “I shattered into a million tiny pieces, and the only thing my mind would focus on was that if I hadn’t been with you, I would have been in the car with her. Maybe I could have done something.”
“Or, more likely, you wouldn’t be here either,” Ainsley says gently.
When did she return?
There’s so much liquid pooling in the back of my throat that I might drown in all the tears I haven’t shed. Each swallow brings more mucus for me to choke on. “But…”
“You sent me away because you said it was too painful to be with me. You blamed me, Saylor. I couldn’t stand that I was causing you more pain.”
I shake my head. “I know, okay? I know. But I didn’t blame you. I blamed myself.” My voice breaks, and Ainsley rushes to my side. Dante shifts his weight so he’s fully seated on the floor between my legs.
“But why didn’t you ever call, Saylor? You knew I would never go against your wishes. If you loved me, why didn’t you contact me when you realized…” He doesn’t finish his thought, but he means when I remembered I’d always need him. It’s what I wrote in my book, and his question is one that I’ve asked myself a million times but never had an answer for.
Today I do.
“You built a life so quickly out there. You—You started showing up in magazines a month after you left. I was never going to fit in that world. The more I saw, the less I liked. It was easier to blame you and hate you than admit that I ruined us. To admit that my mind betrayed me and broke me—turned me into a person I didn’t recognize because I couldn’t handle what life was throwing at me.”
I stare at the ceiling when the connection between us is too much to bear, but I’m all in now. I have to tell him everything.
“The whole time I was in the mental health clinic, I had this daydream that you were out there waiting for me. Or that you’d come back for me. I only remember fragments of what I said to you that day. So, when I left the hospital, I continued to allow myself the dream that you’d come back for me, even after seeing the life you were building. That was always the plan, right? The hope kept me going, even though rationally, I knew. I knew I could never keep you without breaking your spirit too.”
I lift one shoulder and force a crooked smile that threatens tears. “Your life kept playing out on social media, and I…I stopped living. Ains begged me to call you, to talk to you and try to explain how broken I felt, but how could I ask you to come back to this when your life looked so…complete?”
