What Grows Dies Here

“Worried,” he repeated. “Because you are my heart, you are my soul, you are my fuckin’ everything. What happens to you happens to me. What tears you apart fuckin’ shreds me.” His voice broke right at the end. It shattered into a million pieces, and whatever of me was left shattered right along with it.

There it was. There was my lifeboat. He was my lifeboat. Karson. Unyielding. Never-ending. He might’ve toyed with the idea of walking away from me. Not because he didn’t love me, because he did. He loved me with every cell in his body, I had no doubt about that. Leaving me at the lowest point of my life would kill him. It would destroy him. But he’d gladly destroy himself if he thought it was best for me.

But something in him had decided that leaving me was not for the best. He had decided to stay. And not just for the duration. Until I’d healed… Whatever the fuck that meant. Until he took his last breath. He was staying. No matter what.

Because he loved me.

Because I was his everything.

“I’ve lived a very fortunate life,” I said in response to his beautiful words. “I hadn’t experienced true trauma, despite my antics to go around chasing danger and excitement. Something to make my existence a little … deeper.” I picked at a thread on my sweater. “I’m not like Stella, Yasmin or Zoe in so many ways. They’ve all gone through so much to become who they are. They’re all so fucking strong. They’re equipped to handle anything that life throws at them without falling apart. Because they have something to measure it against.”

I focused on the TV.

“I don’t have that,” I said, quieter this time. “I don’t have anything to compare it to. Apart from what I see on TV or in movies. And in TV or movies, they lose their babies. It’s tragic and heartbreaking and horrible … for one scene. It does what it needs to, in that scene. It’s powerful, it’s heartbreaking. But only in one scene. That’s all the audience needs. Truthfully, it’s all they want. All they can handle. They don’t want to experience the reality. So I didn’t even have an idea of what that reality was. And though I’m going to carry this with me forever…” I sucked in an uneven breath as the thought of forever with this pain was absolutely unbearable.

Karson waited in the silence. He didn’t rush to fill it while Olivia Pope yelled at Fitz in the background.

“But I didn’t know I’d have to carry it once I left the hospital. I thought I’d be spared that.” I let out a hollow laugh that I didn’t recognize. “I thought the world was kinder than that.”

I drained my glass, leaning forward to pour from the last of the bottle.

I felt Karson’s eyes on me. I didn’t look at him, not wanting to see or feel any judgement or concern or even love.

“Baptism by fire,” I said once I’d leaned back on the sofa, wincing ever so slightly at the movement. Karson surely looked concerned at that, but again, I wasn’t brave enough to face him. “I am sitting in my own blood,” I told him in a dead voice. “As we sit here, I’m coated in my own blood. I have to sit in it. Because I can’t deal with it any other way. The blood. Anything else would put me at risk for infection. Because my insides are shredded. My insides are an open wound. So blood is gushing out of me. Not trickling, gushing. The world has not been kind to me. My body, the space I have to live in...” I gestured up and down my torso. “This place I can’t escape, is not being kind to me. Still showing me the evidence of what used to grow here.”

My hand ghosted over my stomach. There was still a very slight swell there, even though it was empty. Even though I was empty.

“I’m still dying, from the inside out. Every breath I take, every time I move, use the bathroom, I’m scared. I’m terrified of my own body. And I know that I’m not supposed to be telling you that. That men don’t want to hear about the gory details of it all. We’re supposed to grit our teeth and hide the reality of how fucking horrific it is to go through this, shield the delicate male sensibility.”

“Wren.”

It wasn’t a shout. It was closer to a growl, though the tenor was gentler. It rattled my very bones. Every part of me was called to attention, and it was no longer within my power to keep my eyes on the screen. No, they found him.

Karson’s body was stiff, taut, as tense as I’ve ever seen him. He was like a marble statue. Like an open wound. Like a fucking hurricane. All of those things.

His presence and his expression yanked me further away from my chemically induced detachment.

I felt compelled to stare at him, observing him for a long time before he finally spoke. He held me there, in a mental embrace, in a prison, both comforting and excruciating.

“I can handle blood.” He spoke so fucking quietly, it was almost a whisper. “I know blood. I’m not scared of it. Not scared of you. I’m not going to shy away from the reality of this. I’m not scared of your body.”

There he was, saying all the right words. Giving me everything. Yet still…

“That’s not what I mean.” I stared at him coldly. I never thought I could look or speak to Karson in that way, but there I was. “You said whatever happens to me, happens to you. That’s wrong. You are not walking around coated in your own blood. You do not have to live this the way I do. And I can’t fucking stand to look at you.” I gritted my teeth. “I need you to leave. This is done. We’re done.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Karson’s expression didn’t change. “We’re never going to be done.”

Fury, hot and thick, surged through my veins. “We need to be done.” My voice rose. “I cannot try to be Wren for you right now. I can’t even be her for me. I swear to God, if you don’t leave my house right now, I’m going to scream.”

The way Karson looked at me told me he was measuring my words. He knew me best.

Or at least, he had.

I was dead fucking serious. Panic was clawing at my throat at his continued presence, at his insistence that there was something left of us. I couldn’t face that right now. I could barely face going to the fucking bathroom.

It was becoming increasingly likely that I would lose my mind if I couldn’t escape his stare and that fucking smell of lemons.

“I’m going to walk out of your house,” Karson finally said. “But I’m not walking out of your life. Not now, not ever.”