Erasing Faith(87)

There was nowhere in the world I’d rather be.

Eventually, she recovered her senses enough to realize that she’d collapsed against my chest and cried approximately half of the Pacific Ocean into my t-shirt. Her breaths slowed from heaves to hiccups and her entire body tensed against mine. When she moved to pull away, I tightened my grip on her for just a moment and held her to me.

I’d listened to her tirade — it was my turn to say something.

“Maybe you’re right, Red,” I murmured, my mouth against her hair. “Maybe I am hateful. Maybe I ruined your life. Maybe I’m the devil, and the worst thing that ever happened to you, and a million other awful things.” I tilted my head so my lips brushed her earlobe, and felt her shudder in response. “But did you ever stop to think that even if I am a monster… I might still be your soulmate, anyway?”

With that, I released my hold on her, turned around, and walked outside, not waiting for her response. I knew she wouldn’t have one for me — at least, not one I’d like.

The welcome release I felt when my fist slammed against the first oak tree I stumbled across wasn’t enough to make me forget her, but it did distract me from the pain inside my chest for a few short moments.

And, right now, that was enough.





Chapter Forty-Nine: FAITH


ERASERS



Did you ever stop to think that even if I am a monster… I might still be your soulmate, anyway?

I sat on the floor, my eyes aching almost as much as my fists, and replayed his words over and over until they crowded out every other thought in my head. Honestly, hearing him ask the question I’d been asking myself for three long years was a little more than I could handle.

I hadn’t lied, when I’d told him he changed my life — changed me. He’d flipped my world on its axis and walked away, leaving nothing but bitterness to fill the void he’d created. Since that day, when I woke up in the hospital and learned that life as I knew it was over, I’d had only one mission: to eradicate his memory completely. To cut away every impression he’d left on me, and start over.

I’d learned quite quickly that while, in theory, forgetting Wes would be easy, in reality it was damn near impossible.

Wes…

Well, Wes was like math.

See, as a little kid, I’d sucked at math. I can still remember sitting in Mrs. Sampson’s second-grade classroom, learning my multiplication tables for the first time and failing to grasp the concepts she was trying so desperately to illustrate on the chalkboard. Every day she’d give us a worksheet… and every day I’d find myself staring at the incorrect answers I’d scribbled down on said worksheet, dreading the part that came next.

The eraser.

I’d drag that damn piece of rubber back and forth across my faulty calculations, scrubbing away my errors with each swipe and watching with a growing sense of frustration as the crappy school-issued eraser turned my penciled answers into a blurry smudge of charcoal. No matter how hard I pressed, the marks never came away clean. The faint shadows of my miscalculations were imbedded deeply in the paper, impossible to remove without tearing away fragments of the worksheet as well.

I couldn’t expunge the memory of Wes, any more than I could scrub out those embarrassing math mistakes. Not without shredding parts of myself along with him.

In the end, as much as I might want to, I couldn’t deny the truth in Wes’ words.

You don’t choose who you fall in love with in this life.

You can’t erase your soulmate.

The marks they leave are etched in permanent ink.

***

He came back, after a while, and we ate a dinner consisting of the same stale crackers and canned soup I’d turned my nose up at only hours earlier. At this point I was so ravenous, I’d have happily eaten my left arm, if it meant the hollow ache inside my empty stomach would go away. I tried not to eat too quickly, but my fingers shook as I scraped the final remnants of soup from the sides of the can.

We didn’t speak.

At first, I didn’t mind the silence. But after a while, the persistent quiet began to fill with that uncontrollable, electric feeling. The space separating us seemed to crackle with invisible sparks as every molecule in the tiny cottage began to charge and collide with tension. The air was so thick with the things we’d left unsaid, I soon felt starved for oxygen — each breath I dragged into my lungs made my chest ache a little more, until the lancing pain beneath my ribcage was almost crippling.

I grabbed my duffel bag and began to rummage through it, looking for the pajama set I’d packed. After a sleepless night followed by a day of exertion — both physical and emotional — I was exhausted and had no intention of sleeping in dirty street clothes again. What I really wanted was a long, hot bath to soak away the grime — but that would require me to ask Wes for some privacy and, as I was stubbornly determined not to be the one who broke our silent stalemate, that wasn’t an option.

Unfortunately, I knew from experience that he was just as stubborn as I was.

Snatching a soft pair of shorts and matching tank from my bag, I headed for the “bathroom” in the corner. The curtain was too small to conceal much, but it was better than stripping down to my skin under nothing but the weight of Wes’ eyes. As for his ears — I knew all too well that every sound I made would carry easily past the flimsy hanging fabric.