Page 111 of Forever My Saint
I want to say that it’s different, that we’re the good guys in this story, but we stopped being the good guys long ago. We’re all sinners in one way or another.
“I can’t let you kill him because killing him will kill you too, ?????. You may think it’ll help appease the demons, but it won’t. It’ll only feed them, and they’re never satisfied. They’ll always want more.”
A hollowed sadness evades every part of me as I finally permit my tears to fall.
What Saint says touches me deeply because he’s right. Even though I love him more than I could ever express, he will always be my kidnapper. If we were to go back to the “real world,” what would we tell others? We met because he was hired to kidnap me and hand me over to a sadistic drug lord, who fell in love with me?
There is no normal for us. And even though I don’t care, I know that Saint does because eventually, I will too.
“In this world”—he gestures with his finger around us—“we make sense. We work. But out there, we don’t. I will be a reminder of something ugly with tiny glimmers of beauty.”
“That’s enough for me!” I cry, but my desperation reveals the morsels of doubt I suddenly feel.
This entire time, I was so worried about what would happen once we escaped, but I never really thought about what a future with Saint would be like. It wouldn’t matter where we lived or what we did; our past would always be with us.
“My sister is dead,” he reveals with a hitch to his words. “I can’t go back to living like she never existed. Like this never happened. We both need time.”
“Time for what?” I whisper, the gun in my hand now nothing but a joke.
“Time to stop hating ourselves. And time to heal,” he replies, lowering his hands.
“You don’t want to be with m-me?” I whisper, my lower lip quivering.
Saint sighs, before gently reaching out to brush the hair from my brow. “It’s because I want that, that I… have to let you go. Every time I try to save you, it backfires and makes things so much worse. So now, I am giving you something you’ve never been given since this entire ordeal began. I am giving you a choice.
“Walk away and start over. Forget about me.”
“I can never forget,” I reply, inconsolable. “And I don’t want to!”
Saint cups my cheeks, nothing but solemn regret plaguing him. “But I want you to. I want you to go back to America and forget this world exists.”
“I ca-can’t,” I cry, wishing I could hold it together. “I won’t go. I’m staying with y-you.”
“I know you feel that now, but please understand, I need time to heal too. I came here to protect my sister, but life never turns out how you expect because I failed. I never anticipated meeting you and falling so deeply in love that my entire world would shift and you would become my sun and the moon.”
He wipes away my tears with his thumbs, his chartreuse orbs sparking to life in the dark as they once did all those nights ago when this nightmare began. “I’m broken, so fucking broken. I am shrouded by nothing but darkness. I don’t know how to make it go away,” he confesses sadly.
“If not for the darkness…we’d never see the stars,” I whisper, everything tumbling around me.
He smiles, but it’s so bittersweet. “It’ll be our time, whether in this lifetime or the one after that. I promise.”
A hollowed sob escapes me as the gun falls to the snow, and I wrap my arms around my middle. “I don’t understand this. I thought l-love was enough.”
Saint lowers his lips to my cheek and tenderly kisses away my tears. “It’s because of love that I’m doing this. I want to be the best man I can for you, and at the moment, I need to find out who that man is.”
“I-I can’t do this without you,” I whimper, closing my eyes as he washes away my sadness.
“Yes, you can. And you will. I want you to be happy, Willow. Please, for me, live.” And what he says next is the reason I’ll walk away. “And please…let me. Promise me.”
Nothing has ever been harder than this exact moment in time. “Okay…I pr-promise.”
I can’t take it any longer and throw my arms around him, sobbing into his neck. I don’t know if my tears will ever stop because no matter how wrong this feels, how this is going against everything I want, I know that Saint is right.
We came together in the most heinous of circumstances, and we found strength and love in something littered with ugliness. But now that that ugliness is gone and we have an opportunity to start afresh, we both need to find who we are again and whether we fit together.
I know for Saint that time may not heal all wounds because he has lost so much. He needs to find himself, and he needs to do that alone because the saying rings true—how can you make someone else happy if you’re not happy with yourself?
Our love for each other isn’t the problem; it’s that we both need to love ourselves again.