Page 194 of Fighting the Pull

Until…

“And what does the box have to do with it?” he asked.

“I’m not going to sit back and allow you to waste your life like your father did,” Tom answered.

“I’m not suicidal. I broke up with my girlfriend. It happens.”

“We saw the interview, Hale,” Genny said.

“Well, Elsa was the one who conducted the interview, Genny, so it isn’t like she wasn’t in the know,” he pointed out.

“You can know, and your heart will still hope,” Genny returned. “But her heart didn’t hope. It was well beyond that. She’d given it to you. That’s what happens when you find the person who it belongs to.”

She had.

She’d fallen in love with him.

Jesus God, this shit had to fucking end.

Hale shook his head. “That’s not on me.”

But it was.

He felt it.

Every day. Every minute. Every fucking second since he left his apartment, left her behind, he felt it weighing on him.

Suffocating him.

Burying him.

He hadn’t taken a full breath since he’d lost sight of her after she climbed the stairs.

Genny put the wineglass down and stood, looking at Tom. “This was a mistake, Tom.”

“No, it isn’t. Don’t give in to his shit,” Tom retorted.

That was when Genny opened him up.

Made him bleed.

“This isn’t my Hale. I don’t know this man. I don’t want to know this man. So I’ll wait until my Hale comes back so I don’t have to have memories of whoever this man is.”

He couldn’t take it anymore.

“Fine,” he clipped. “Fuck it,” he went on, prowling to the box.

He ripped off the tape, opened it.

When he looked in, he saw nothing but a ring box sitting on a piece of paper and what looked like an X-Ray image sleeve.

He pulled out the ring box, finding the piece of paper was attached.

He turned it over, and scrawled on it in his father’s hand, it said,Last.

Seeing his dad’s handwriting, saliva filled his mouth, but he swallowed it down and looked back in the box.

A piece of paper was taped to that too.

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