Mornings feel different when your heart feels lighter. I know I shouldn’t let it, but I bask in as much of it as I can, deciding to overanalyze it later.
Loving someone and forgiving someone are two very different things.
I love him. I’ll probably always love him.
But can I forgive him and just forget the damage he’s inflicted since he walked back into my life? Forgive, maybe. Forget, never.
Some things are easy to forget, whereas some hurts are so huge, you simply choose not to see them again.
And some are a reminder you need to keep close to your heart in order to guard it from any more injury.
“Maggie, hey,” a familiar voice says.
Glancing up from my shopping list, I find Sam standing before me. What she’s doing at the plaza in Bonnets Bay is beyond me. “Hey, what are you doing here?”
For some stupid reason, I feel kind of bad, knowing how she feels about Felix, how she’s probably always felt, standing in front of her and still tasting him on my tongue.
“Just passing through on my way out of town, stopped in to see a friend.” She looks around. “Where’s your baby?”
“At home.” I don’t really feel like explaining everything to her, nor do I feel the need to.
She nods. “Cool. Well, I know I’m probably not your favorite person. But—”
Seriously? “Don’t bother, Sam. I know you would’ve visited him in jail. I’ve seen you place yourself in front of him at every opportunity available.” I square my shoulders. “You’re not a nice person. In fact, you are my least favorite person.”
She just stares at me, jaw slack, then clears her throat. “Right. Well, at least I made the effort to go see him. I don’t remember you ever doing the same.”
“Oh, fuck you.” Someone walking behind me coughs, obviously hearing our conversation, but I don’t really care.
Sam’s lips tilt down into a sad smile. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
She walks away, and my teeth grit together as I watch her go. She snatches some chips from an end display on her way to the register, and a memory assaults me at the sight of her hand.
The memory of those exact hands, her hands, touching me, her voice shaky and panicked, asking if I could hear her.
“It was you,” I whisper to no one. She’s the one who found me. How did she find me?
My heart pounds as I watch her walk out of the store. I feel terrible all of a sudden. She might be the very reason I’m alive, that Archie is okay. We might both be here today, thanks to her finding me in that back alleyway.
Shivering and trying not to let any more memories take hold, I grab the rest of the items on my list and make haste to the checkout, wanting to get home in case there’s any chance of a repeat of the other week’s panic attack.
Once home, I settle down and have coffee with Warren and Jake, a little put off by Jake’s silence but too lost in my head to think about it much right now.
Later that night, I open the wardrobe to get my box. I keep spare paper and pens in there, so when I want to write to him again, it’s all where I need it. It helps to get it all out on paper. And that’s what I think I need to do right now.
Write him a letter.
When I started seeing Dr. Hayes, she told me it was good to write to Felix. And even though I didn’t send them at the time due to not knowing where he’d been sent, she said that was probably even better. An outlet for me to write out my feelings and fears without being held back by the worry of anyone reading them.
Only, it’s not here. I pull everything out, a container of old hair ties I thought I’d lost, scrunched up paper, Archie’s keepsake capsule, my old photo album, and a couple of stray photographs. Everything, and still not here.
Tugging on my hair, I sit back on my haunches, my breathing turning shallow.
“Fuck.” Getting up, I race through our little home, tearing open cabinets, drawers, and making a mess in my desperation. They’re not here. I know that, yet I keep searching.
“Looking for this?” My head snaps up from where I’m sitting on the floor again in my room, surrounded by random items. Felix steps slowly into the room, dodging them, with my blue box tucked against his stomach.
My own hollows, lurching wildly when I think about what he might’ve read. What he might know.
“Mags.” He tosses it onto my bed then drops to his knees in front of me, his eyes watering and his jaw rigid as if he’s trying not to cry. “Why the hell couldn’t you tell me?”
“No, no.” I back up, getting away from him. “You can’t know. How? Did you go through my things?”
“Doesn’t matter.” His voice turns colder. “It’s too late to worry about that.”
My hands shoot to my eyes, as if shoving my palms into them can stop me from seeing this moment, can prevent any more trouble coming for us.
“Tell me, Maggie.”
“You know why!” I cry out, dropping my hands. “You’ll, you’ll just …”
“Just what?” He growls. “Go after the deadbeats who did this to you? Who messed you up so badly you became a shell of a fucking woman?”
Closing my eyes, I reluctantly nod. That’s exactly why.
He sighs loudly, pulling me onto his lap until my legs straddle his waist.
My eyes stay closed. “You can’t leave again …” I plead, my head shaking. “You can’t.”
With his hands tunneling into my hair, he whispers, “Look at me, Little Doe.”
Tears overflow when my eyes open, and he watches them, one by one, slide over my cheeks and sail toward my chin before lowering his hands and scooping them up with his thumbs.
“I won’t leave you again. Ever.”
When I just stare at him, he gently shakes my face. “Do you believe me?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” I whisper brokenly.
His face crumples. “Christ, Mags.” He sniffs. “Did they …?”
“They ran tests and said there wasn’t any sign of … that.”
Felix’s eyes close briefly, his relief palpable yet his arms start shaking. He drops them to my waist, resting his forehead on mine and squeezing my hips. “I’ve been such a dick.” He laughs gruffly. “Scratch that. I’ve been a complete, selfish asshole.”
“Stop.”
“No, I should’ve seen it; hell, I think I did. I just got too caught up in my head, in my own self-righteous bullshit, when I should’ve been listening to my heart.” Tears start to run down his face, and I feel that little slice of anger inside me eat itself and disappear at the sight. “I’m sorry, so fucking sorry. This, everything, it’s all my fault.”
“Shhh.” I grab his head, tucking it in my neck. His body quakes with the force of his torment. His cries silent, yet his sorrow so loud I can’t hear, see, or feel anything else.
I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to let him fall apart and tell him that everything is going to be okay.
Because it would be a lie.
But I also can’t leave him alone in this. He needs me, but I’ve needed him more. So I wrap my arms around him, running my hands up and down his back while his tears dampen the skin of my shoulder.
After a while, he sniffs, lifting his head to look at me. “I love you.”
Giving him a shaky smile, I simply nod and kiss his cheek. He frowns, brown eyes studying every inch of my face. I don’t let him look too hard, whispering, “I don’t want your pity, Felix.” I’ve never needed or wanted that, only him.
A broken breath leaves him. “You don’t have my pity. You have every fucking part of me.”
My heart somersaults, my resolve crumbling. And as much as I want otherwise, it’s probably time for him to go before we end up in one of the same positions we were in last night.
“I should get some sleep soon. Someone kept me up late last night.” I try for a joke, rising from his lap.
He sees past it, trying to pull me back down, but I tug my hand free of his and step backward.
“Mags.”
“No, Felix. I need …” I pause, laughing sadly. “I don’t even know what I need.”
“Me,” he says resolutely. “You need me, and I need you. Like we always have.”
“That’s true, but I’ve also realized that I don’t.” I tilt my head, meeting his gaze when he stands. “Maybe we fell apart for a reason, Felix. I mean, think about it.” I throw my hands out at my sides. “When has it ever been easy for us? Why has it always been so hard?”
His brows pull in. “That’s the thing, Mags. It’s easiest when it’s just us. Sure, life complicates shit, but only if we let it.”
“But we did, Felix. We let it. And it was effortless, the way we gave into it.”
He steps closer, his voice lowering. “Don’t say all this, please.”
“You’re not getting it, though.” I draw in a slow breath then release it, not sure how to put it into words. “I love you. I’ll probably always love you. But sometimes, it’s just not enough. You left me, and I had to find out who I was without you, and the second I was discovering who that woman might be, you barged into my life again, which would’ve been okay, except for the fact that you tore any progress I’d made into irreparable pieces.”
“I said I’m sorry. Look—”
“Stop!” I shout then freeze, afraid I’ve woken Archie. When I don’t hear anything, I mumble, “Please, just go.”
He doesn’t move. “What about last night?”
“What about it?” I glance away.
He steps closer, crowding me against the wall. “What about it?” he rasps out. “What about the way I made you come three times on my cock and once on my tongue? What about that?”
My stomach quivers at the memory. “Felix—”
“What about the way you looked at me while I drove you crazy, huh? As if you’d finally found home again …”
“We can’t—”
“Because that’s what it felt like for me, Mags. It felt like I’d finally come home. Only now, you’re saying you don’t know if I’m welcome anymore, is that it?”
At a loss for words, I nod, my heart slamming against my ribcage as his breath fans over my cheek.
He nips the skin of my neck. “Wanna know what I think about that, Little Doe?”
I don’t think I do, and I keep my mouth shut. His finger tilts my chin up, his lips resting over mine when he whispers harshly, “I think that’s fucking bullshit.”
He steps back, grabbing my blue box from the bed and leaving the room. With a sob trapped in my throat, I watch him go, listening to the sliding door close before sitting down on my bed and trying not to cry too loudly.