Page 144 of Beautiful Obsessions
The words were quiet.Wounded.
I held his stare.
“I was.”
His jaw clenched.
“No.”His voice sharpened.“No, don’t do that.”
I said nothing.
He took one step into the room, then stopped again, as if his body couldn’t decide whether to come closer or run.
“You’re dead,” he repeated, but this time it sounded like an accusation.“I saw it.I watched the footage.”
“I know.”
His eyes flashed.
“Youknow?”
That was the first crack in him.The first real break.
“You know?”he repeated, louder now.“You know what I saw?”
Archie stared at me.Then he laughed once.It was a terrible sound.Empty.Raw.Almost broken.
He stepped further into the office, his hands curling at his sides.“I watched guards carry your body out of this room.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
His voice snapped across the room.I deserved every soul crushing bit of it.
He came closer now, each step careful, dangerous, unsteady in a way that had nothing to do with weakness.
“You let me think you weredead.”
His face twisted.Grief and resentment moved behind his eyes, and there was no clean way to erase that.
“You let memournyou.”
“Yes.”
“You let me bury you in my head every day for four fucking years!”
My throat tightened.
His hand lifted, then dropped again, like he wanted to shove me, strike me, reach for me, maybe all three.He looked furious enough to kill me and devastated enough to collapse.
That was grief.Ugly.Confused.Starving.
“You were alive,” he said, and now his voice was lower, which was worse.“All this time, you were alive.”
“Not all of me.”
His gaze hardened.
