Izzy comes around and hugs me as she kisses the top of my head. Her lavender scent fills my senses. I'm so lucky to have her. Then, she speaks.
"I'm so proud of you for staying alive, fucker." With that, she spins around and walks out without saying another word, leaving me laughing, aching, and speechless.
Ander paces back and forth, one hand shoved into his pocket and the other cupping his chin as his fingers work in and out through his beard.
"Ander, I promise. I'm okay." I say softly, begging him to meet my eyes.
He stops pacing, but he doesn't spare me a glance. He sighs, and his shoulders slump forward. He shoves his other hand in his pocket as well. He looks so defeated, and I don't know how to fix it.
After a few beats, he walks over to the window ledge and looks out. The silence is thick, and I'm unsure what's going through his mind or what to make of it.
"Tell me something." His deep, low voice cuts through the silence like a machete slicing through a cane stalk. It's almost unnerving.
I don't speak; I wait patiently, giving him all the time he needs to form his thoughts into whatever questions he needs to ask me.
His gaze stays focused intently out of the window.
"Is he. . . Is he th-the reason you left me six years ago?" The pain in his voice guts me.
Chills.
They spread like wildfire throughout my entire being.
I let out a sigh.
"I was never protecting him, Ander.I was protecting you from him. You don't know what he's capable of. The things he's. . . You don't know all of the things he's done. He was the cause of the accident that killed my parents and Natty! He admitted that night in the hospital, and then he threatened that YOU would be next if I didn't let you go. He said no one could have me." My words are strained, each one choked out through the sobbing.
He spins around and finally faces me, and the anger and hurt in his eyes pulls the tears from me like a magnetic force.
"You. . ." He stammers, but his words are laced with anger, causing my gut to constrict and ache. "You could have talked to me. We were supposed to be unbreakable." He scoffs just as disgust flashes across his face and starts walking toward the door.
I can understand and sympathize with his hurt and upset feelings, but not his anger—not with me. We don'tdoanger.
"Ander!" I call out loudly, but he keeps approaching the door.
"I'll be back in a bit, I need to thin—"
"Goddammit, Anderson. Look at me!" I scream at him. I've never screamed at him out of frustration, not like this, and it feels… wrong.
He stops in his tracks right past the foot of my hospital bed.
He looks broken, and every part of me wants to fix every aching part of him.
"I just don't get it, V. Make me get it. Make me understand all of this. Make me understand how you could let that asshole come between us. Has he not taken enough from you? He's out now, and he's after you. Are you going to give up and do it again?"
His words are pleading and begging for answers, and I can sense us both shutting down. The tension is so thick that I could physically choke on it.
Our eyes are locked, and the pain he's processing is so evident that it's shattering my heart.
I don't respond instantly. I nod.
"He's not after me, Ander. He's afteryou. I was just the easy target. I was the warning. He doesn't want me dead," I scoff,"He wants me to hurt. He knows what he did to me only hurts me physically, but hurtingyou. . ."I look away, breaking our intense staredown.
"Hurting what we have, again, he knows that would break me completely. That's what he wants. I'm not giving it to him. Not again, Ander. I knew the fucking risks. I took them anyway, and now he's after you. This is my fucking fault. I was selfish." I begin to sob, letting my head fall in my hands as the emotions take me over like a tidal wave.
"If he wants to hurt me, let him hurt me. He can't hurtyou, Ander. I can't let him hurt you." I let out a sigh through the tears as the panic controls me.
"I can't live in a world where you don't exist. I'd rather know you're alive and out there, safe. No one deserves this. Especially not you. The last fucking thing I wanted was to lose you again. I can't put you through this. It isn't right."
