Page 74 of Ricochet
I could feel her stiffening again, but I wasn't letting her go.
"What are you sorry about, K?"
Could I tell her? Should I tell her?
No, I needed this now. I needed her to pretend it was just us.
"I fucked it all up. I wasn't strong enough, wasn't smart enough to withstand everything that was going on."
"It's okay."
"No, it isn't." She dropped her leg over my hips, straddling me. She reached the nape of my neck with her hands, playing with my hair, and it was as if nothing ever happened.
But it did.
I did something bad, something really, really bad, and she would never forgive me if she ever found out.
I cheated, I lied, I destroyed an innocent life because I couldn't stand up for what I believed in.
"I hope you'll be able to forgive me one day, Phee. I hope one day, you’ll understand that everything I did, I did it for Ava and you. I never wanted to hurt you."
She kept quiet, continuously playing with my hair. And just before my eyes closed down, alcohol and exhaustion pulling me under, I heard her voice in the dark.
"I could never forgive you, Kieran."
Four Years Ago
What have I done?
What the fuck have I done to us?
I’ve been hiding in my apartment for the better part of the last four days, and I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that she was gone.
Ophelia was gone, and I was the one to blame.
I always thought she would end up being the one to push me away, but no, I did it all by myself. Our picture stood on the table in front of me… She was smiling, and I was looking at her as if she was my whole goddamn world.
And she was, she still is, so why the fuck did I do this? Why, why, why? Why did I allow my mind to take me to the darkest of places and betray her like that?
I had no excuse for breaking her trust, breaking her heart. Fuck, I didn’t just break hers, I broke mine as well. And that look on her face as she left the apartment… that look would haunt me for the rest of my life.
I knew she wasn’t joking when she told me to run. I fucking knew she would react like this. In Ophelia’s world there was no place for forgiveness, only vengeance. In her head, forgiveness wasn’t something you could ever earn, and once you lost her trust, there was no going back.
It didn’t matter if you were her blood, her lover or her friend. Her revenge was always the same —ten times worse than what you did to her.
And I definitely wasn’t a person she loved anymore. It was all there, written in her eyes. She hated my guts.
Maybe if I drank myself into a stupor, I would forget I broke both of our hearts. It was tempting to break this glass in my hand, and just cut my veins open. It would hurt less than what I did to us.
It would hurt less than this suffocating pain in my chest, this turmoil in my head. Maybe I should do it. Maybe I should just leave this world. Because the world without her wasn’t the world I wanted to live in.
And she would never forgive me.
She would never forgive me for this.
I wish I knew why I did it. Why I cheated on her. Maybe if I knew, I would be able to explain and ask for forgiveness. Maybe… Maybe she would understand.
Yes, that’s right. If I figured out why and what pushed me to do it, I would be able to talk to her, to make her understand. It wasn’t me; it was my mind playing tricks on me.
