solace. It felt good. I needed it. Needed the pain, so I could feel something.
Lila’s face flashed through my mind, the image searing into my brain. The tormented look on her face. I could almost taste the saltiness of her tears on my tongue.
She hated me.
I hated myself. What a fucking pair, we were.
Two hours later, all my muscles were dead and numb. I could barely feel my arms or my legs. I sank to the ground, my body too weak to keep me upright any longer.
“Better now?” Colton asked, joining me on the ground. He laid on his back beside me with a groan.
“No,” I said.
He sighed. “Look, I don’t wanna talk about your feelings. We can leave that pussy talk for some shrink, but you don’t look good, man.”
My eyes closed, and I breathed through my nose. Silence filled the gym for a long time before I finally spoke. “I fucked up.”
He hmphed “Yeah, that’s obvious.”
“She hates me.” I could barely get the words past my clogged throat.
“Nah. Lila can’t hate you.”
“Christian was driving the car that night… the night of Lila’s accident, the night her parents…”
Colton paused, mulling over my words. “Christian Carmichael?”
I nodded.
He swore under his breath. “Shit. You knew?”
“I found out a couple of months ago, when I was digging into Lila’s accident. It always bothered me, and I wanted to know, wanted to bring her justice. I found out it was Christian,” I explained.
“Before you two started dating?” he questioned.
“Way before,” I confessed quietly.
Colton swore again. “Lila found out? Oh shit, the gala! Christian!” Colton finally put two and two together.
My chest tightened with a vice grip. “He was there. Lila came face to face with the person who killed her parents, Colton. Do you realize what this means? I did everything to protect her from the truth,” I croaked, my voice barely audible.
“Shit, Maddox. I don’t know what to say.”
“Lila hates me.” Saying the word out loud caused me to almost double over in pain. I hadn’t expected it to hurt this much, but it did. Everything fucking hurt.
“She doesn’t.”
“You weren’t there. You didn’t see the look in her eyes.” The look of pain and disgust. Betrayal and broken trust.
“I should have fought harder, should have stopped her from going to the gala, but she was so goddamn stubborn. I thought I’d be by her side all night, keeping her safe, and away from Christian. I thought we’d be able to leave before anything… I thought…”
I rubbed a hand over my face, so exhausted, so mentally… done. I just wanted to wrap myself around Lila and forget about this chapter. I wanted to turn the pages over and begin anew. “I thought a lot of things, but I still messed up.”
And the worst part of it? Lila didn’t even know half of it.
All my secrets…
If she knew the rest of it…
No. The mere thought of it made me sick.
I wasn’t strong enough to love… and then lose her. Not like this.
Lila was a maze with no escape. Once I had entered the labyrinth that was her, I lost sight of the exit and never bothered to look for it again. I didn’t want to leave the maze. I didn’t want to escape her.
I wanted to stay and bleed at her feet. Because I found what I needed there.
My salvation.
13
Lila
It is said that pain comes in waves. Whether it’s emotional or physical.
The first wave hits you unexpectedly. It’s usually the most dangerous, the harshest wave.
The second wave, you’re ready for it, but it still hurts.
By the third wave, you’ve grown accustomed to it. The pain starts to take shape, to build up inside of you. Under your skin, inside your flesh, buried in your bones, deep in the marrow of you.
And slowly, your body grows numb.
Your mind goes numb.
You live with the pain; it becomes part of you.
The wave came and went. The pain stayed, with an angry stubbornness. The wound festered, oozing puss. The agony grew.
I drowned. I floated. I sunk to the bottom.
My mom always told me to honor the anger, to give pain the space it needed to breathe, to never run away from my emotions… to live and breathe it. This is how you learn to let go, she’d tell me.
But I didn’t know how to let go of the fury coursing inside of me, of the pain that chased me every waking hour and into my nightmares.
A dull throb spread across and around my scars, and I rubbed my