Page 135 of A Dark Fall

A sad look crosses his face. “Yeah, I expected it. Just deluded myself, I guess. Thought maybe once I had you, once you loved me, all the dark shit wouldn’t matter.”

So then, I confirmed his worst fears. I was everything he expected. The thought depresses me, as though I’ve let him down.

“But I’m glad it matters to you. It should. It should matter to someone like you.” He nods. He has that look on his face again, and I think maybe he’s going to come toward me again, pull me into him again, not let me go this time. I can’t decide if I want him to, because I don’t think I’m strong enough to resist it.

But when he moves, it’s not toward me. It’s away, and instantly, my whole body begins to throb with the weight of a heavy, suffocating loss. Quiet and slow, with shock the past few hours, my brain explodes with a torrent of thoughts.

He’s leaving. He needs to. He can’t. I can’t let him go. I need to let him go. I love him. I’m in love with him. I can’t be without him. I know what that feels like, to be without him. It’s walking, living, breathing death. I can’t go through that again. What am I doing?

I stand there and watch as his tall, powerful form distances itself from me. When he stops at the kitchen door and turns back to me, my heart stops beating entirely—I’m certain of it. He stares at me for a long time before speaking, and the look in his eyes is so painful to see.

“You know, I wish I’d been born into a different life, Alex. I wish I’d been born into the kind of life where I could have met you and you could have been with me without any of the dark shit or the secrets and the things you can’t ever forgive me for. When I was little, I used to daydream I’d been dropped into someone else’s life, ’cause I’ve never felt as if I belong in this one.” He stops and looks uncomfortable, embarrassed even, before his eyes are serious again. “I stopped dreaming about that, but I’ve never stopped wishing I were someone else, that I were living a different life. What I did, I did to survive. To make a life for myself that was in some way tolerable. Then it was to make my son’s life better than what I had. I know you won’t understand that, and I get it. I get why to you, I should have made different choices, and you know what? You’re right. If faced with better options, I would have made different choices. But you know something? I wouldn’t change any of it now. Not a single fucking thing. Know why?”

Strong. His words are always so strong. There’s so much strength in what he just said. Since I don’t know where my voice has gone, I shake my head. No, I don’t know why he wouldn’t change a thing.

“Because everything I’ve ever done, every bad choice I ever made, was worth it the night I met you. I’d never have been there that night if I hadn’t made those choices, and I believe in things happening for a reason. It’s one of the only things I believe in, actually.” His eyes shine with conviction. “I don’t judge you for not wanting to be with a guy like me. You deserve better, I know. I always told you that. But I guess I believed you when you told me I was wrong.”

As I stare back at him, every single second of our relationship plays through my mind like a movie. A beautiful movie in which everything is given a sort of nostalgic romanticism: the night we met, the night in his office, the first time we made love. All of it plays quickly through my mind against a beautiful piano instrumental, and it looks perfect. Every single frame of it.

“You shouldn’t have listened to me, Jake. I didn’t know what I was doing.” I shake my head. “I didn’t know anything.” I knew some things. But mainly, it was secrets and evasions and delusions.

He closes his eyes as though the very sight of me is causing him pain. When he opens them again, they’re glittering green.

“I never wanted any of this,” he tells me.

Of course he didn’t. Why would anyone wantthis? I’ve no idea what he wants me to say in response to that, so I just nod and steady myself by turning back around to look out the window.

“Please go now. I need you to go now,” I beg.

“Alex, please ...”

“Please go.” I’m pleading now. Why isn’t he leaving? He needs to go. I need him to leave.

When I turn to face him, I almost shatter completely. His face is unbearably sad, filled with torment, and it twists everything up inside me tightly.Then, with a nod of finality, he turns and walks out of the kitchen, out of my house, and out of my life.

After I hear the door close, it’s a full five minutes before the tears come again. I know this because I stare at the clock the entire time. It was 6:10 p.m. when he walked out, and I didn’t feel the sharp sting of slow-moving tears roll down my face until 6:15 p.m. They seem to come from my throat or my lungs, and they burn on the way up, suffocating me. As my body finally gives in, I slide down to the floor and cry like a child. Great, heaving sobs that shake my entire body. A moment later, Fred comes padding up to me and curls up at my feet, nudging his head against my knee in what feels like solidarity.

He’s actually gone. Ilethim go. I’m in love with him, and I let him go.

I had to. Ihadto.

Except how do I live like this? Without him?

My heart feels as if it’s been battered and tortured and left out to die. As the tears keep falling, Fred presses his warm little body tighter against me, purring softly.

I’ll be fine. It’s young, my heart. It will recover. It has to.

So, this is what it feels like. Losing something properly. It feels as if my guts have been ripped out by a pack of hungry dogs. I had a taste of it last week, of course, but this feels different. This time, she knows.

I knew the pig wanted her. I saw how he looked at her that night. I saw, and it made me want to fly across the table and rip his fucking throat out. Except I couldn’t because I wanted to impress her. Beating her friends to a fucking pulp wouldn’t have done that. In the end, he did it his way, and, I have to hand it to him, it was seamless. Clean. There’s a part of me that still wants to rip his throat out, but there’s another part of me—a deep, masochistic part—that almost wants to thank him.

Because now she knows, and I didn’t have the guts to tell her myself. I’ll only ever wonder how long I’d have been able to hide it all from her. I mean, how do you tell your darkest, most horrendous shit to someone like her? How do you tell someone who looks at you like you’re something special that you’re a piece of shit?

You don’t.

I knew she’d walk away when she found out, and that I’d have to let her, because a woman like her doesn’t belong with someone like me.

For almost twenty minutes, I sit outside her house with the overwhelming urge to go back in. Crawling on my hands and knees like the piece of shit I am. I should tell her I’m not letting her go and promise her the moon on a fucking stick if she’ll stay with me. I’ll beg her if I have to. I’ll tell her I need her because my life before her was a cycle of shit, and I’m probably going to drown in it without her.