Insolent (Crimson Elite 4)

They said I’d hemorrhaged and there was nothing I could do without a doctor close by.

We manage to pack all my things and go home. I don’t go back to the place I shared with Slate. I can’t. That place has baby girl things everywhere, and if I have to see that, I’m not going to make it, and I’m not sure what I’ll do. It scares me to see her things.

Slate’s hand clasps mine as we head home. My father’s driving as we sit in the back. Slate doesn’t look at me while he holds my hand, his stare is lost to the world outside. Lost to me.

When we arrive, he’s a gentleman, he always is. He helps me out, grabbing my bags and things, and walks with me to my old room—the one we used to sneak him into when we first met. He places my bags on the floor then stands there. He can’t seem to make eye contact.

“You’re leaving?” I ask him, and again he doesn’t make eye contact with me.

“Yes, I have to do the house.”

“No, you shouldn’t have to do it alone.” He shouldn’t, and my father will gladly pay for someone to do that.

“It has to be done, and I need time to think.”

“About us?” I ask him.

“Just to think, Olympia. I’m hurting, too.”

“I know, Slate.”

“I’ll be back before the funeral.” He doesn’t let me say anything else before he turns and walks off. Leaving me by myself to be lost in my own head.What do I wear?

There has to be a place out there that supplies clothes for funerals, so it’s something I don’t have to think about. Slate hasn’t come back since he left last night, and I didn’t sleep, too afraid of what’s to come today. Plus, the darkness when I close my eyes is haunting me, it’s not somewhere I want to be.

“Slate’s out the front ready to go. You okay in there?” my father asks tapping on my bedroom door. My hands shake as I put on a simple black dress and pull my hair back.

The day goes in motions and monotones.

We stand at a casket that should never have been invented for someone so tiny.

We go back to eat and have coffee. I don’t touch a thing.

The day turns into a week where I don’t leave the bed.

Slate sleeps next to me, not touching me, he barely looks at me.

A week turns into a month, and we barely speak to each other.

Then a month turns into two, and I know what I have to do.

“I love you, you know that, right?” I tell him. He’s pulling his trousers up his legs as he gets dressed for the day. He alternates from sleeping here and his parents’ house. We don’t touch each other at all, all we do is sleep. We have become two strangers who simply share a side of the bed each.

“I know, Olympia. Well, at least I think I do.” He scratches his chin where he hasn’t shaved for what seems like ages. “What’s this about?”

“This needs to end. We aren’t healthy like this. We will never be healthy like this.”

“You’re breaking it off with me?” he asks in disbelief.

“I’m setting you free. You can’t turn into this person. The Slate I know doesn’t mope around like you’ve been doing. You’re vibrant, it’s one of the things about you I find so alluring. I’m tearing you down, and I can’t stand by and watch you simply accept that this is your lot in life.”

He scoffs, throwing his shirt across the room and it hits the lamp. “No. You don’t get to decide this shit. This isn’t your choice. It’s our choice, and I love you,” he screams.

“I love you, too, but it’s not enough. In one week’s time I’m leaving. I can’t hang around here anymore. I have a ticket to go around the world. This place is depressing, and it’s bringing me down, and you with it. You don’t deserve this, Slate.”

“You can’t even sleep with the lights off, Olympia, and you want to run away?”

“No. I want to find out who I am. I want you to fall in love again and have…” the word is on the tip of my tongue, but it hurts so much to say it, but I blurt it out anyway, “… babies. Someone who will give you babies.”

He steps up, his hands clasping mine. “I had a baby, and she was beautiful.” Tears leave my eyes, but I don’t touch them or acknowledge they’re there.

“She was. I love you, Slate. But I also want you to go.”

“No.”

“Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”

“Don’t you want me anymore?”

“It’s not about that. At all. It’s all about our fate being intervened, and that had to be for a reason. Maybe you need someone who will love you the way you deserve to be loved. I suck at that. I can’t do that. You always loved more than I did, it’s only fair I let you go now.”