Sweet Soul (Sweet Home #5)(80)

I closed my eyes, cradled into Levi’s chest as that poem slipped from my mouth. I could feel the happiness I felt that night as I began to fade away, the water turning red around me.

“Baby?” Levi rasped, as he tucked his nose into my neck. “I can’t deal with the fact you did that.” He took in a ragged of breath. “That you felt so alone that you’d do that to yourself, that the bitch brought you to this point.”

My chest ached so much that I rubbed over the skin trying to alleviate the pressure. It didn’t work. “I woke up in the hospital the next day, and my first feeling was one of despair. Complete despair that I’d failed, that I’d been found. That I was still in this horrible world. I felt that way for days and days. I knew I wasn’t going to go back to that house, so when I was able, I dressed in the clothes the staff had brought me, took my notepad that Abbie had brought too, and I ran.” I turned my head to Levi’s, still tucked into my neck. “I was running until the day you found me. When I stopped… because of you.”

Levi was silent as he held me close in his arms. But I was raw and exposed, and I felt uncomfortable in my skin.

My thoughts drifted to Clara and the lost look in her eyes. I flinched, realizing I’d read her all wrong. She wasn’t looking to be saved, she just wanted to leave this world knowing that she wasn’t alone. I’d given her that out.

“I thought I’d helped her,” I confessed, and felt Levi raise his head.

“Clara?” he asked.

I nodded my head and turned, closing myself in against Levi’s warm body, the water turning cold around us. I rested my cheek on his chest. “With my poems today, I thought I’d helped her. Turns out I’d helped her in her decision to take her life once and for all.”

“Bella mia, listen,” Levi said. He lifted me until I was higher in his arms. His bloodshot eyes looked down at me. “I’ve been helping out at Lexi’s center since we lived in San Francisco, and sometimes, there’s nothing you can do if someone doesn’t want to fight. I saw it a few times with the people who had eating disorders. They didn’t want to live anymore, so they didn’t. And I’ve seen it here Seattle, with the bullied kids. Clara isn’t the first suicide we’ve had, she’s just the first one you’ve seen. We help more than we lose, a hell of a lot more, but sometimes they’re just too damaged, too scarred, to moved on.”

“Like me?” I asked, unsure if I was one of those girls. The girl that hides her voice because she can’t cope with one more harsh word said against her… because it could be the one to finally break her, to make sure the next time she held a knife to her wrist, she’d see the suicide through.

“No,” Levi pushed, “Not like you. You’re a fighter, you’ll push through. Look at how much you’ve changed since being here, with me.”

“Because of you,” I said, and smiled.

But Levi shook his head. “No, because of you.”

I closed my eyes, but I shivered in the cold water. “Come on,” Levi said, and pressed a kiss behind my ear. “Time to get out.”

I let Levi help me from the water. I let him pat me down with the towel and wrap me in a robe. I let him lead me to bed, lights off, but for the jar by my side, and the plastic stars twinkling on the ceiling.

The minute we were in the bed, Levi wrapped me in his arms. “Do you know what I wish for, Levi, what I hope and pray for all the time?”

“What, bella mia?”

“That people have one thought, one instinct: Be kind-hearted. Simply be kind of heart.”

Levi exhaled into my hair. “It’s a good wish to have for people, baby.”

“But it won’t come true. Just look at my mom, look at me, now look at Clara. It never ends.” My heart physically ached at that truth. “Why can’t it end?” I swallowed, my throat raw from tonight. “Words are the worst kind of ammunition. Physical pain fades in time, but bullets of cruelty forever penetrate the soul.”

Levi didn’t say anything in response. What was there to say to this sad truth?

As we closed our eyes to sleep, I heard my mom’s voice: there’s no place for us in this world, baby girl. Even as I lay here in Levi’s arms, safe and adored, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been right.

I wasn’t sure I could live with this fear anymore.

I was sick of hiding my voice.

I was sick of the power people had over others.

… To victor cruelty, not hope…





Chapter Fifteen


Levi


I opened my eyes, my head banging like I’d been hit by a truck. I stared at the wall beside my bed and immediately felt my stomach drop. I’d hardly slept all night, too busy holding Elsie in my arms, my mind circling with what she’d told me, how she’d opened up… and I felt shamed. Shamed that I hadn’t seen those scars, never questioning why those cuffs were around her wrists. And those girls at the dinner? Those cruel bitches…

I gritted my teeth, my blood boiling with rage. I took a deep breath, and turned in the bed, my arm reaching out to pull Elsie close. I frowned when I felt her side of the bed was empty. I sat up when I felt the linen beneath my palm was cold.

Throwing the comforter off me, I searched the room with my eyes. “Elsie, bella mia?” I called, but there was no reply.