Nightwolf

“Well how fucking noble of you! You say you’re in love with me but you’re ending things because you don’t want to get hurt? Newsflash, Wolf, everyone gets hurt! Everyone! You don’t get to skip out on it just because you’re a fucking vampire.”

“I know that!” he snaps at me. “Okay!? I saw my father die in front of my eyes. My mother left and never came back, killed by humans. Later, my brother died! Bet you didn’t know that either. I’ve been through more death and pain and grief than anyone I know and then your mother…” he trails off, breathing in deeply through his nose, eyes pinched shut and the pain coming off him is so palpable I feel it in the marrow of my bones. It feels so fucking cold.

“I loved your mother, Amethyst,” he says in a choked voice. “But I love you even more. And I will not survive losing you, because I will lose you. One day you will pass on from this world and you’re going to leave me all alone. I know this is the selfish choice, but I can’t go through it. I can’t go through this again.”

I can only shake my head. I’m so angry and I’m so fucking sad and I don’t understand why he’s choosing his own happiness over mine.

“You’re putting yourself before me,” I say quietly.

“Amethyst…”

“You told my mom you would take care of me!” I sob, and it all hits me so hard, so painfully, that I’m almost collapsing to the ground. My mom! She trusted him, she trusted him!

Wolf is at me in a second, holding me up. I try to wrestle out of his grasp but he’s stronger, stronger than any human can be, and he holds me to his chest, tight.

“I am going to take care of you,” he says gruffly, resting his chin on top of my head. “I will never break that promise.”

I sob against him. “So, you won’t break that promise,” I say after a moment. “But you have no problems breaking my heart?”

He lets out a rough exhale. “I’m breaking my own heart, too. Please believe me on that. But if this is what it feels like now, I won’t survive what happens later.”

Fuck you, you don’t get to decide, I think, so angry. So broken. You don’t get to decide what’s best.

But he has decided.

And whether he truly loves me or not, it’s not enough to make him be with me now.

That’s what it all comes down to.

He doesn’t love me enough to be with me now, despite what the future holds.

“I’m not going to leave you,” he says to me. “I’m going to support you through this in every way.”

Such a fucking gentleman.

“Come on,” he says, pulling away, putting his arm around my waist. “I’m taking you home.”

He leads me to the car and puts me in the passenger seat and I’m operating like I’m on autopilot. All at once I feel myself shutting down, becoming numb. Ice. I welcome it. I welcome the chance to turn off all the pain. It’s the only way I’ll get through any of this without losing myself for good.

The car ride home is filled with silence. Awkward silence, but I’m too dead inside to care anymore. I just need to be alone. I need to get away from him, from this, and be alone in the dark.

Eventually we park in the spot behind the house and I’m bursting out of the car, heading into the building through Dark Eyes.

Thankfully it’s empty. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I run upstairs, tears streaming down my face, go straight into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. I run the bath, making the water hot, shake a whole bunch of bath salts in it. I put the toilet seat down, sit on the edge of it, and try to hold it together.

I try so hard to hold it together.

But inside, I’m breaking in places I didn’t think I could break.

My heart is already shattered from losing my mom.

But Wolf…Wolf, he was the one holding those broken pieces.

He was the one I thought could put me back together. Maybe not right away. But one day. One day he would help me become whole again.

But what Wolf did instead was take those tiny, fragmented pieces of my heart and crush them in his hand. Over and over again. Until my heart was no longer broken, but pulverized. Just dust now. Just dust that blows away at the slightest breeze, leaving me absolutely hollow inside, without a heart. Without being whole.

I barely take my clothes off. The tub is half-full and the bathroom is hot and steam is clogging the mirrors and I get into the water, my warm tears falling in like raindrops.

I get on my knees.