Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,108

become, it didn’t make me feel loved. It made me feel useless.”

“You think that’s what I’ve done? You think I’m stuck in the past?” I demanded. There was no accusation in his voice, but it felt like my own fingers were turning against me, pointing back to me as he pointed them at his mother.

“I think that pretending your hand isn’t broken doesn’t make it any less broken. How can you heal if you won’t even accept that you’re broken?”

Somewhere in the back of my mind his words clicked into place, and I knew.

He was right. My daughter was the broken hand I refused to accept. I’d never let her be real to me. I’d never seen her; never heard her cry; never smelled her, or held her. I’d made her nothing more than a fantasy. I’d dissociated myself because it was easier, and in the process, I’d unknowingly sabotaged any chance I ever had of moving on.

How was I supposed to mourn something that had never been real?

“So what? I’m just supposed to move on? Forget it ever happened?”

“No,” he replied somberly. “I think you need to forgive.”

“Forgive?” I scoffed. I was past the point of caring how rude I sounded. “Forgive who? I wouldn’t even know where to begin…Cam? My parents? Thomas? The whole fucking world?”

He didn’t flinch. He only shook his head before speaking softly,

“You have to forgive yourself, kaikuahine.”

It was the last thing in the world I expected him to say, and it left me stumped.

Forgive myself? Did I even deserve to be forgiven?

The thought jarred me further. Until that moment, I hadn’t even realized I was punishing myself. It had become an engrained part of my life. I hadn’t deserved happiness. I needed to suffer.

It was masochistic…It was twisted, and only faced with it, could I see that it was wrong.

The first sob took me by surprise. It welled up inside of me, bursting out of my tear ducts and chest. It gutted me, and left me unprepared for the second. I didn’t cry. I sobbed.

My body was expunging a poison, or maybe it was expelling a demon. It was rough and ugly and unapologetic. It went on forever, one tidal wave after another.

“I don’t know why I’m crying,” I managed to say when I could speak. He made no move to comfort me, and for that, I was thankful. Pity was one thing I couldn’t take.

“You do it for the same reason you do when making up with an old friend after a long fight…You cry because you feel relief…and because it means peace.”

I didn’t know about peace, but I certainly felt relief. I’d spent so much time trying to make things right. I wanted to make the perils of my life worth something more. I thought my pain was a price my daughter deserved.

Alfred’s mother had wasted the sacrifice. I had no intention of doing the same. The only way I could keep that from happening was to forgive myself. I wouldn’t do it for me. I’d do it for my daughter.

But peace was not mine to have. How could it be? I was still scarred with a grievance that wasn’t mine to forgive. I could forgive myself for my daughter…But I’d never be able to forgive myself for inflicting the same fate on Cam.

Some things really were unforgivable.

Chapter Twenty-One

Adley

“Seriously, Hannah!” I barked with real anger, climbing back to my feet from where I’d just hit the ground. My volume was quite a few decimals higher than necessary for my dorm mate, who was just a couple feet away, but near decapitation by stiletto boot will do that to you.

“What?” Her big brown eyes blinked up at me innocently, honestly perplexed by my irritation.

I let out a sharp exhale though my nose. It was unable to escape through my clenched teeth.

I would have had more respect for her if she had been faking her ignorant act, but unfortunately, Hannah really was that clueless.

Finally, I relaxed my jaw and sighed as I retrieved the flying shoe and tossed it back to her florally-inspired side of the room. Deep down I knew I really wasn’t angry at her. It was the Christmas holiday in general that was causing my sourness, and Hannah in her childish snowman sweater, was just an easy target.

“Sorry everything’s a mess,” she apologized, placing the boot in the no-pile.

She wasn’t wrong. A semester’s worth of possessions – hers and mine – were strewn about the room: bras draped off light fixtures;