Page 927 of One More Kiss

Daniel

I wasn’t supposedto be driving. But I didn’t really care. My car had been in the lot for over a week now, and I literally had nothing to lose anymore. I had hit a wall. The inevitable dead-end that came with being my father’s son. It had consumed him. And it was trying to consume me. I just needed to know if the only girl, the only person, the only soul that I’d ever felt one with, that ever understood me—the good, the bad, and the ugly—was still there.

I parked at the back of the parking lot and walked toward her apartment. It was on the second floor, and I could see her lights on. The window over the balcony was open. I stopped when she came into view. My heart fell to the pavement.

I couldn’t see her features, but she was pacing, and she was crying from the look of it. Then she started throwing her hands around, and I could hear her yelling. I narrowed my eyes and strained to listen. She and Victoria were fighting. Like really getting into it.

“He’s not good enough for you!” I heard Victoria say.

I clenched my jaw. I needed to hear what all was being said. So, I made my way closer, staying away from the light of the streetlamps, and stood right below their balcony.

“He is the only one who really knows me!” Tate was fighting back. Fighting for us.

“No, Tate. He doesn’t. I know that’s what you want to believe, but Daniel is a fraud. He wanted one thing from you, and he got exactly that, and then he was gone.”

I rubbed my hand over my face, fighting the urge to run up there and tell her to shut the fuck up. She didn’t know me. Just like everyone else. She knew what was on the outside, the game I had to play, the façade I had to show everyone. But she didn’t know me because I would never do that.

“That’s not how it was,” Tate shouted back. “He was kind and real and gentle, and I think he loves—”

“Loves you?” Victoria cut her off. “Tate. He. Used. You. It was solidified when he ran away from the club the other night.” She softened her voice, and it literally made me sick with rage. It was manipulative. “If he loved you, he would have said it.”

It was not that easy.

“It’s black and white, Tate.”

No, it’s not.

“It’s not black and white.” Tate finally spoke, and I looked up through the metal fire escape stairs. Not that I could see her. But I held my breath. “But maybe…that’s the problem.”

No.

“Maybe it’s too complicated.”

It’s not.

“Even if he does love me…”

I do….

“He can’t fix me.”

There was silence, and I heard Victoria say something softly. A moment later, the front door opened. I hid against the wall as Victoria walked past me to her car. I looked back up at the window. I needed to go up there. Maybe I couldn't fix her. Or me. But I could fix us.

But then her voice froze me in place. “I’m done.”

“No,” I whispered.

“I. Am. Done.” She was practically shouting.

I knew she couldn’t hear me. But I heard her. And her voice seemed so resolute that it sent chills up my spine.

I could hear her lose it. She sobbed above me as she broke down and took me with her.

Maybe Victoria was right. We weren’t going to save each other. We were going to drown each other. And I wouldn’t do that to her. I listened as she fell apart. It was wrong, standing there, listening to her heart unfold. She was unraveling, and I could feel it in my fucking bones. So, I did the only rational thing an irrational person could do, I climbed the fire escape.

I was sure under normal circumstances me climbing up the fire escape would’ve been seen as a romantic gesture but there was nothing romantic about depression. It was dark. When you were in the throes of it, and I mean deep in it, the hurt outweighed gravity itself. And that thing in your chest, beating to keep you alive, felt more like it was pounding against your existence. Like it wanted you dead. It resembled a mangled hunk of meat more than a vital organ.

I sat down right outside her window, praying she wouldn’t see me. But I could feel her standing there, and the cry she let out a moment later penetrated my soul. It was so raw, so real, so animalistic—I had to cover my mouth to keep from screaming back.

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