Damien doesn’t listen and clutches my arm tighter. “You can’t go back in there.”
“Who says? I live there.”
“What if he woke up?”
I peel his fingers off my arm. “Then I’ll deal with it.”
“Deal with it?” Damien raises his voice. “Deal with it?” He grabs both of my shoulders, gazes deep into my eyes and shakes me. I’m terrified, yet mesmerized by the emotion in his eyes. “No, Addy, no.” He lets go of my shoulders and runs a shaky hand through his hair before bringing it down his face. “God, Adelaide. Do you know how beautiful and smart and witty you are?” He sighs and shakes his head. “Of course you don’t,” he points a finger at my window, “because you let him make you believe otherwise.” He closes the gap between us, tangling his fingers in my hair, gazing lovingly into my eyes, his lips a breath away from mine. “You can’t go back there. I won’t let you. I won’t let him hurt you anymore!”
I swat at his hands, untangling them from my hair. “You know I have to,” I snap. “I haven’t even graduated high school. I have no money. No job. No license. Tell me, Damien, what will I do? Where can I go? Where will I live? How will I support myself?”
Damien takes a step closer. “Me.”
I laugh and judging by the howl I let out at the end, I know I sound like a lunatic. “You? How will you do all that? You haven’t even graduated. And what about college? Aren’t you going to Yale in the fall? I won’t let you give up on the things you want in life for me.”
He fans the tips of his fingers across my cheek and I look away. This is killing me. He has so much to look forward to and if he stays with me, I’ll continue to drag him down. I’m like a whirlpool in the middle of a choppy sea, once you’re in my grasp I’ll have no choice, I’ll snatch you by the leg, and pull you under.
“Don’t you see, Addy?” His voice is soft and there’s so much warmth in it, that just by listening to it, I feel my body overheating. “I want none of those things. I don’t care about Yale. I don’t care about the other things you think I want in life. Because the truth is, Addy, the only thing I want and won’t give up on is you.”
I close my eyes and tears dangle on the edges of my long lashes. My heart thunders like the gray sky before a flash of lightning peeks through the darkened clouds. My stomach feels like it has grown a pair of legs and is sprinting up my esophagus. “Stop, Damien. Please.”
“Addy, I—.”
“Just go,” my voice cracks with a mixture of pain and forcefulness.
“Addy, I don’t understand.” He moves toward me and I fight off the hysteria that’s building up inside of me, trying to hold every part of me together when it really feels like I’m falling apart.
“Just leave!” I scream as tears rain down my cheeks and my shrill high-pitched voice echoes through the humid, night sky.
Damien’s eyes widen and he clutches his chest. His eyes flit to the ground and he staggers backward the tiniest bit. By the surprised look and the way he’s clutching his chest, to me it looks like my words have punctured his heart and that’s what breaks me.
I can’t keep a straight face anymore. I can’t keep my emotions in check anymore.
I wail out in agony and run from him.
Back to my house.
Back through my window.
Back into my bed.
I wrap my pillow around my head and scream as an agonizing pain pumps through my body. Cocooning myself in my blanket, I continue sobbing softly into my pillow. Daddy’s snores bleed through the walls and hearing his garbled breathing causes me to relax a little. I’ve convinced myself that everything I’ve just dealt with would feel worse if he was awake. Then again I have a twisted thought and think that maybe just maybe the physical pain from Daddy’s, fist might numb the emotional pain and that keeps swelling and swelling and swelling inside of me.
I’ve come to the heart wrenching realization that Damien is too good for someone like me. He is bright and beautiful and smart and is going to have an amazing life, far far away from here, and far far away from me.
He’ll find a lovely girl at college. They’ll get married. Have a dozen beautiful babies. And they’ll be the envied couple that everyone looks at when they imagine what love and happiness should be like. They’ll be the picture of perfection.
Damien deserves that. He deserves all of the blissful and incandescent happiness in the world.
And there’s a sick feeling, swirling around in my gut that lets me know he’ll never find that kind of happiness with me.
Chapter 6
~AFTER ~
Dr. Watson is listening to music.
His back is to me, but I can see the vinyl spinning on the record player behind him.