Chapter Twenty Five

River



Pain is a funny thing.

It can be mild.

Or, it can be this all-consuming, bone deep ache that makes you feel like something is broken-in this case, it’s my heart.

Then the pain transforms to anger, its roots taking hold deep within, merging with the pain that is radiating throughout my chest where my heart used to rest, until you can’t differentiate the two.

A loud, angry, pain-filled growl rips from my chest as I strike out, punching the wall of the laundry room. I rear back and find myself punching it again, needing the release, to feel a different kind of pain.

Blow after blow, I strike out until I fall to my knees on the floor, my bloodied hands buried in my hair, twisting, and pulling the strands. I welcome the biting sting of pain.

I deserve the pain, the hurt.

Because it compares very little to the pain and hurt that I know that I’ve caused her.

I’ve fucked things up so bad and I don’t know what to do or where to go from here.

She left me.

I know that I told her that I didn’t love her and that I needed some space, but I didn’t mean it. At least, not the part about how I felt about her. The space, I most definitely needed, and with it, clarity.

I need to come clean with her and tell her everything, all of it, down to the very last detail if I have to and pray that she still wants to be with me.

I came back to the apartment a week after I told her that I needed space, with a clear head and an aching heart, ready to tell the truth and beg for her forgiveness. Instead, she was gone, all that was left was the phone that I got her and her house key on the counter, evident that she walked right out the door and left me.

Regardless of what I told her, I have never felt for another person the way that I feel about her, not that she knows that, and now she won’t even talk to me, so I can’t even fix my monumental fuck up!

I keep calling Caprice, who swears that Chevy’s not there and that she’s not seen her, but I checked Chevy’s phone. She called Caprice right after I left for Jacks, and Caprice texted an hour later that she was here.

So, sorry, but I don’t believe her.

I told Caprice that I knew that she was there. Although, I didn’t elaborate on how I came by that information, and that if she wouldn’t talk to me over the phone, that I would drive there and make her talk to me face to face.

I need to tell her the truth.

All of it.

That I actually do love her, more than I could ever begin to express.

And, that I am a fool for lying to her.

But also, I need to tell her the truth and then apologize for keeping what happened the night of the accident from her.

I know that I should have told her that it was me before we slept together, and I know that I was in the wrong for allowing things to progress without divulging the whole truth to her.

Although that accident changed my life forever, it in a way brought her into my life, and I am grateful in that respect, but I will forever be sorry for how the accident has also changed her life.

It changed mine in a positive light and made me change the way I had been living my life. It made me become a better man and is the whole reason that I started volunteering at the hospital. *She* is the reason that I started volunteering at the hospital.

The guilt that I felt over killing her best friend and putting her into a coma, it’s something that I will never be able to erase, no matter how much time passes or how much volunteering that I do.

The days, weeks and months following that accident were some of the darkest that I have ever had to endure. The ridicule, the trials that were to decide my fate, which ultimately found me innocent and ruled it as circumstantial due to the weather of that night, seeing as how I had not been speeding or doing anything that I should not have been doing, at least not that night.

I had been lucky and escaped with a broken arm, some bumps and bruises, and a slap on the wrist.

I should have just told her. I know that me not telling her and letting things progress as they did make this so much worse, but I know that it’s something that I have to do. I honestly don’t know if she would have forgiven me if I had told her before, if we would have been able to move on from it, if she would have ended up as mine.

But *this*.

This is so much worse.

I’ve gotten to know her on a personal level, I’ve had a taste of her. And what I’ve had will never be enough. I know the sound of her laugh when she is happy and her sigh when she is content. The way she bites her lip when she’s nervous and the way her eyes darken when she’s turned on. I know how soft her skin is, the delicious strawberry scent of her hair after her shower, the sounds she makes as we bring pleasure to one another.

I know her bad and I know her good. And now, as much as it kills me to do so, I have to come clean and then let her go, allowing her time to decide what she wants.

I can only hope that she can forgive me of my transgressions and find her way back to me.

I will always love her, and my heart will always be hers. I can only hope that she will still feel the same once she knows everything. That she will still be by my side once she’s learned all of the bad that’s been kept hidden for far too long.