“They kept me shackled until I could be sedated.”
“Dylan.” I cover my mouth with my hand as that scene plays out before me, as though I were watching it happen right now. I’d seen him shortly after he got back, emaciated and dirty, so it’s not that hard to picture.
I wish it were.
“Do you remember when you came to see me at the hospital? After I got home.”
“Yeah.”
“When I grabbed your arm?”
“I remember.” Tucker told me I was lucky, but I don’t believe I was ever in any real danger. That’s just not Dylan.
“I knew who you were when you came in, but the moment you got too close—” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “It threw me back into that cave.”
I don’t want to risk saying the wrong thing and stopping him, so I try to remember to breathe as he tells me more than he ever has.
“That’s how it was for the first year. I couldn’t be left alone, just in case I lost my head and ran away, so I lived with Tucker and Riley. Anytime someone touched me, whether it was an accidental brushing of their hand on me or a simple handshake, I would get so sick to my stomach I’d either throw up or lose my head. Every second of closeness cost me another piece of myself.” Dylan doesn’t make eye contact with me, nor does he move from where he’s leaning against the railing. “Then, it got a little bit easier. I was able to finally hug my mom three years after I got home.”
A tear slips down my cheek. Three years? “I had no idea.”
“You wouldn’t have. In moments of lucidity, I begged my family not to tell anyone. I thought it was because I didn’t want the town to know, but I think—on some level—it was about you.”
“Me?”
He looks at me now, and there are tears glistening in his hazel eyes. “You always saw me as this strong, capable man, and I’d been beaten down to the point where I didn’t want to live anymore. I didn’t want you to remember me like that.”
“I would have understood.”
He nods. “That’s what made it harder. For me, it was better if you were angry at me than to know you pitied what I’d become.”
I cross over to stand in front of him, though I keep my distance. “Dylan, I wouldn’t have pitied you. I would have tried to help. I would have done anything you needed because I loved you.”
A tear slips down his cheek. “In the ocean, I asked you if you trusted me, and you said yes immediately.”
“I do.”
“Then trust me when I tell you that it was the best choice. The distance between us kept you safe.”
“I didn’t care about safety. I only cared about you.”
He takes a step closer to me now. “Do you know what it would have done to me if I’d hurt you? There would’ve been no coming back for me, Emma. You were all I thought about when I was being held. You were my only light in that pit, and I lived in our memories during my darkest moments.” Another step closer. “When I got home, and I saw you, I thought?—”
“That I wasn’t really there. That you were living in another memory.” I cover my mouth with a shaking hand as my heart breaks for him all over again. And not just for him—but for me too.
For what we were.
What we could have been.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “For all of the pain I caused you. For being too weak to face you when I should have.”
“You’re not weak, Dylan. You’re the strongest man I’ve ever known.”
“If you’d seen me then, you wouldn’t think that.”
“I saw you in that hospital bed, and I still think that. There’s nothing you could’ve done that would make me feel any different.”
“Emma, I wanted to die. I begged God to take me. To put me out of my misery, and when He didn’t respond, I began to believe He’d just forgotten about me.”
