Page 11 of Chasing Hope

I don’t have a home to escape to.

Matteo steps in front of me suddenly. I look up at him, the tears making him blurry again, but I can guess that he’s frowning.

“What do you need, Dove?”

That was the wrong question to ask.

It’s like when you’re on the cusp of crying, using sheer willpower to stop the tears from falling, and all it takes is one crumbling domino, one simpleAre you okay?, and you’re tumbling.

My bottom lip wobbles, my chest rising on a sharp inhale.

“I want to go home,” I whisper, all but choking on the next words. “But I don’t have one.”

“Oh, Evie.”

Matteo’s softness is my undoing.

My knees buckle, my shoulders shaking as I’m consumed with grief. Grief for the childhood I’ve been mourning, the best friend I thought I had, the utterly shitty ex-boyfriend, and the apartment that I tried to pour love into.

I grieve my old life because there is not a shred of anything for me to return to.

Matteo catches me, his rough calloused hands clasping my arms gently. Shame should course through me, mortification that he is seeing me at a point so low in my life that I can’t find my way back out of the hole I’ve been shoved into, but I don’t have the energy for it.

I have nothing left.

And I’m terrified that I can’t get through this pain.

Through the ugly tears and the horrifying sound escaping me, Matteo scoops me into his arms before setting me down on the bed. He lays a blanket over me, his hand hovering above my body, his movement hesitant, until a sob wracks my body and his hand comes down, stroking my hair.

It’s the first touch in months that hasn’t made me flinch.

“I’m here, Dove. I’m here,” his gruff voice whispers.

But I’m not.

And I don’t know how to explain to him that I lost myself months ago, that what’s happening is more than just the betrayal of what I discovered today.

Evie Ellington died eleven months ago, and I haven’t been able to revive her.

Carter and Felicity just put the final nail in my coffin.

Attempting to rub the sleep from my eyes, but I fear I’ve cried to the point my eyes have swelled shut.Is that even possible?Slowly sitting up in bed, I keep rubbing until I’m able to pry my heavy lids open.

It takes an ungodly amount of time to realize that…

I’m not in my home—the sudden reminder that I don’t have one has my stomach freefalling

I cried myself to sleep