Page 71 of Edge of Darkness (Night Prowler 4)
She wanted them to scream at her. She wanted them to kill her. But what she got was as excruciating as having her skin peeled off and made her want to die: pity.
To be denied righteous guilt about something horrible you’ve done, to feel true remorse and have no one accept it, or believe you, or even think you have a reason to feel guilty in the first place, is soul-killing. To move forward, to heal, you must first be allowed to say you’re sorry. You must be allowed to express your regret. If you can’t or you won’t or your regret is mistaken for something else—like arrogance or bullshit or mental illness—you will never move forward.
You will be trapped inside your body like a fly in liquid amber, dead and buried but perfectly preserved on the outside, so everyone who looks at you sees only a tomb.
So she stopped talking to the therapists. She stopped talking to her friends, she stopped talking to anyone about anything. And when she and her father moved to Florida, and then to Spain, she found she’d lost the ability to be open with people, like a muscle that atrophies from disuse.
Which worked perfectly well. Until Christian. Until now.
“And you told Christian all this…and he walked out on you.” Asher’s voice was harder than before.
“No, you don’t understand, Ash. I didn’t tell you the worst of it yet.”
His brows lifted: what could be worse than what you’ve already told me?
Ember whispered, “His pa
rents were killed in a car crash. By a drunk driver.”
Asher closed his eyes. “Oh, honey. Jesus. Fuck.”
Yes. Exactly.
“So now…now you know why he…why we can’t be together. And why I’m such a mess.” She rested her cheek against his chest and hugged him tighter.
He hugged her back. Her head lifted and fell with his deep inhalation, his slow exhale. He wound a lock of her hair between his fingers and gave it a gentle tug, and she looked up at him through wet lashes.
“Okay,” he said softly. “So what’s our plan?”
“Plan? Well…I’m going to clean this place up a little, then maybe do a little food shopping—”
“No, dummy,” he interrupted with a gentle smile. “What’s our plan to get him back?”
Ember looked away and swallowed. Outside, a cloud had passed over the sun, and the room was suddenly darker and even more depressing than before. “There’s no getting him back, Ash. You don’t get over something like this. This is a deal-breaker. And rightly so.”
He took another breath, then set her away from him with his hands wrapped around her shoulders. “Honey, that man was willing to kill me if I didn’t let him talk to you, do you remember that? Kill. Me. Whatever kind of a shock this was, you telling him about—you know—he still has feelings for you. There’s no man on earth who can flip off that switch once it’s been flipped on, understand?”
“Ash—”
“So it’s been a few weeks, he’s probably had time to think it over and cool down—”
“Asher—”
“He’s probably hurting just as bad as you are, honey—”
“I don’t want him back, Ash!”
Asher stared at her, inspecting the expression on her face. “Why not?”
Ember took a breath and said quietly, “Because I don’t deserve him.” She glanced around the apartment. “This is what I deserve; that’s why I’m here. And it’s not feeling sorry for myself, it’s really just…it’s more like…” she floundered for a moment, then found the perfect word and whispered it. “Penance.”
A muscle twitched in Asher’s jaw. He was getting angry again. “You don’t think you’ve done enough of that over the last six years?” Before she could open her mouth and respond, he added, “Who do you think you’re helping by living like this? Do you think you’re honoring their memory, all those people? Do you think hurting yourself makes a damn bit of difference in the end?”
Her eyes pooled with tears again. “No. But it’s only right that I suffer as much as possible, after everything I took away from so many people. It’s the only way I can think to make amends.”
His head dropped. He didn’t let go of her arms, he just stood there holding her like that for a moment until he looked up at her again. “You are seriously fucked up, you know that?”
This, she knew, was a rhetorical question. She bit the inside of her lip and didn’t answer.
