“It’s okay, Axel. If you let me borrow your phone, I can call someone to pick me up. I don’t need you to drive me.” Her voice sounded disheartened, but I had no idea why.
Keeping my back to her and my hand on the cold door knob, her resolve wore me down as I said, “Last night, I thought I’d have to watch you die. And now, this morning, I feel like I have died. So before I let you go completely, can you just at least concede and let me make sure you leave safely? Can you just give me this one last thing?” I wanted to keep all emotion out of my tone, but that proved to be impossible with the amount of pain and grief that flooded me. It was true…I wanted to keep her safe one more time, hoping that would save my soul. Maybe give me some peace. But what I couldn’t tell her, was that I’d never survive watching her husband pick her up and take her away to their happily ever after. I could feel myself hanging by a thread, and I knew without a doubt that if I had to witness that, I’d willingly let go and fall into the dark abyss again. Only this time, I doubted that I would be able to climb my way out. I’d barely made it out the last time.
“I don’t need you to save me, Axel. I’m not the same damsel in distress as I was in high school. I’m not the poor girl that needs you to run to my rescue anymore. I can’t say much about last night…I don’t remember it. But I can promise you that I wasn’t trying to harm myself. I’m stronger, happier now than I was all those years ago. I’m not a kid anymore.”
Hearing her soft-spoken voice and the strength behind her words, I turned slowly to take her in. I’d spent so long watching her from afar, never knowing who she was to me. And since pulling her from the depths of the cold water, realizing her identity, I hadn’t once taken a close look at the woman she’d become. When I awkwardly peeled her wet clothes from her body, I had to fight with myself to not study her every curve, her every mark, her every freckle. I had to force myself to keep at the task of getting her into dry clothes, not letting my eyes fall on places I’d only dreamt about before. And once I had her resting on the couch in front of me, I couldn’t look anywhere but her covered chest, studying the rise and fall of her breaths. But seeing her now, standing in front of me, her spine straight and shoulders squared, it became obvious that she was not the same girl from my past.
“Last night wasn’t the first time I’d seen you, Aubrey.”
“So you have been stalking me?” she asked with a raised eyebrow, and I couldn’t tell if she’d meant it as a tease or an accusation.
“No,” I gritted out through clenched teeth, frustration taking the front seat of my emotions at the moment. “I told you, I had no idea it was you until last night. I’ve been going to that lake a lot, and sometimes you’d show up. I like to sit against the trees, and when you’re there, I watch you for a few minutes before leaving to give you some privacy.”
“Gee, Axel…that sounds a lot like stalking.” This time, she didn’t sound as if she’d meant it as a joke. But it still didn’t come out as condescending or condemning.
I snapped my head side to side before slapping my palm hard on the drywall next to me out of unbridled irritation. “Just stop! I wasn’t there for you. Okay? You just happened to show up some nights. And on those nights, I simply observed your sadness. I watched the way you carried yourself to the dock with your shoulders down, your head down. You just seemed…down. Sad. Lonely. Fuck! I don’t know what you were, but happy and strong were never words that came to my mind when I’d see you.” The strained and heated words scorched my throat and left my cheeks burning.
“Then it’s a shame you haven’t seen me in the light of day, Axel,” she replied with a raised, furious voice, startling me at her aggressive argument. “I hate my job. But I need it, so I stay. You happen to see me on the nights after I leave work. And yes, maybe I appear sad in those moments, because on some level, I am. But that doesn’t mean I’m weak or unhappy. I’m not a sad person. Right now, I’m livid…doesn’t make me an angry person, either. You have no right to come back into my life after walking out of it six years ago and try to play the hero again. I. Don’t. Need. You.”
“Walking out of it?” I asked, practically screaming at her.
“Yes, Axel! You walked away! You packed everything up and vanished.” For the first time since asserting herself, she showed a crack in her façade. She gave me a glimpse of her true emotions regarding me and our past. Anger was a given, but she finally let me see what was beneath it—sadness, remorse, pain. “You know what? I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. Just give me your phone so I can call for a ride.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I growled out. “We both still have feelings about how everything went down between us. We need to get those out. Maybe your life is all sunshine and fucking rainbows, but mine isn’t. We need to get to the bottom of this…get everything out—the anger, the regret, the unresolved emotions that have buried me whole.”
“Everything has always been all about you, hasn’t it?” Her eyes turned soft, saddened and dull. “After realizing your feelings for me, you got scared and ran, making the decision to end what we had without an ounce of concern for how that would affect my life. When shit went down at school, instead of taking me or my feelings into account, you just bolted. I made one decision for myself and you freaked out…ran away. Now here we are, after all this time, and it’s still all about you. You need to resolve things to ease your conscience. You need us to talk about it so you can move on with your life. When will you ever think of me? Huh? For once, Axel, think about someone other than yourself. I’m fine. I have a better life now than I did back then. Ripping open these old wounds won’t help me…they’ll only serve to hurt me.” Her voice shook, deceiving her strong persona.
Hearing Bree admit that she’d made a decision for herself back then only reinforced the burning pain of betrayal within me. “You have no right, Bree. You ruined my life. You set it on fire, and then stood back while it burned to the ground. Take some fucking responsibility for that. Do you have any regret for the one decision you made for yourself?” I wanted her to feel my anguish. I wanted to rip open her old wounds and stuff my pain inside of them, making her ache the same way I did.
Her gaze narrowed and her nostrils flared. The yellow of her eyes brightened in a way I’d never seen before. “Not for one single second. I have not one morsel of regret for that decision. It was mine, and I own it. No matter the outcome of it all. No matter how it molded my life, how it changed me…I have never and will never regret it. Because I’m smart enough to know I wouldn’t be who I am without it.”
I wanted to hit something, scream, yell, fight back. I wanted to shake her until she realized the damage her decision had caused me. And somewhere, deep inside, I wanted to numb it all with a drink. I hadn’t needed to fight that urge in over a year, but listening to her admit that confiding to the school about our relationship was something she’d never regret, invited back the need to drown out my pain. I hated it. I hated the pull that amber liquid had on me. I hated even more the pull she had over me. I wanted them both severed, but they seemed to be permanently attached. They were one and the same. One born from the other.
“I’m so glad that you feel no remorse over ruining someone else’s life. You clearly aren’t the person I thought you were.” I turned and opened the door wide, allowing the early morning light in.