I don’t want to say the ugly words to Jacey. I don’t want her to know. But she prompts me.
“What did you demand?” she asks quietly, but there’s a certain knowingness to her tone, an aching fragile timbre. She knows.
“An abortion. I demanded that she have an abortion. I wasn’t man enough to raise his baby. I forgave her, but I couldn’t do that.”
Jacey’s quiet now, still. She watches me, waiting for me to continue. I don’t want to, but I know I have to. The bullet is out of the gun now. There’s no putting it back.
“We were just eighteen,” I say quietly, staring at the wall. “We were getting ready to go away to college together. We were going to have a new start, away from Cris. I made my forgiveness contingent on that one thing. She had to get an abortion. If she wouldn’t, then I was done. I made that very clear.”
Emma’s face is in my head, innocent and young, as she pleads with me.
Dominic, I can’t, she’d cried. My parents would kill me. And it’s wrong, Dom. It’s wrong.
“I pressured her hard,” I finally continue, even though those words are a gross understatement. “Every day. Every hour. She cried and I raged and I refused to give in. I didn’t care that her family was strict Catholic. I didn’t care that she thought her soul was in jeopardy and that her parents would never forgive her. In my head, I thought of the baby as an it, as Cris’s mistake. I didn’t think of it as an actual human life. I was too blinded by my anger and my hurt and my hate to care about anything but myself.”
I pause and stare at Jacey. “Do you see how selfish I was?”
Jacey is deathly pale as she stares at me, as a million thoughts flash through her eyes. “Anyone would’ve been upset, Dominic,” she finally answers hesitantly. I can see that she doesn’t know what to say. I can’t fault her for that… because who would?
I turn away, staring into the dark, trying to focus on the night instead of the memories in my head.
“I took her to get the abortion. It was a quiet ride. They wouldn’t let me go back with her, so she had to do it alone. On the way home, she huddled into the car door and cried. She wouldn’t talk to me for days. But she talked to Cris. Because a few days later, on our graduation day, I went over to her house and got there just as he was leaving. I lost my shit. I told her that I never wanted to see her again, that if she wanted Cris she could have him. So after making her have an abortion for me, I left her anyway.”
Jacey utters a weird noise, a guttural sound that I’ve never heard pass her lips before. Her knuckles graze her teeth as she presses her fist to her mouth.
“Emma skipped the graduation parties. She didn’t come and I didn’t care. I went to a party with Sin and Duncan that night, determined to get drunk and forget all about her. So that’s what I did. I was getting a lap dance from Taylor McKay when Emma called me. It was late and she was babbling and I couldn’t make heads or tails out of what she was saying… except that she’d cut her wrists. And that she needed me.”
“Did you go?” Jacey whispers, and I can see from her face she’s afraid of the answer.
“Of course I went. But it was too late to save her.”
Jacey shakes her head in disbelief now, like she’s expecting that I’m just spinning a tale, acting out a scene. “Dom… I…”
She doesn’t have the words. Because the answer is clear. I’m a horrible person. A monster.
I nod curtly, once, determined to keep my composure.
“Emma was a light. Everyone who met her knew that. She was too good for me. And I failed her. She trusted the wrong person, because I turned away when she needed me the most. I abandoned her. The worst part is that she loved me anyway.”
And she did. I’ll never forget the look on her face when she saw me come in. It was like everything was right in the world, even though she was dying in a sea of her own blood.
“What happened when you got there?” Jacey whispers.
I’m wooden now as I force the words from my lips. I stare back out the window, away from Jacey’s horror, as I see the memories in my head.
“The bed was covered in blood, and Emma was pale and shaking and cold. She’d sliced her arms from wrist to elbow, and I knew that it wasn’t a cry for help. She wanted to die. She didn’t want to be saved. She was surrounded by poems that she had written, all about death. I don’t know how I didn’t see that I’d broken her so completely.”
I pause, trying to untangle my tongue, trying to swallow the emotion that lingers there, trying to swallow the memories so that I can act calm. I’m a fucking actor, for Christ’s sake. I can act calm.
I somehow manage it, because my words come out in a wooden monotone. “There was so much blood. There were bloody footprints everywhere. I’ve never seen so much blood. She grabbed my shirt and clung to me and her hands were so cold. Her lips were so blue.”
She was so pale.
The blood.
The blood.
The blood.
I pause. “There was so much blood. We had towels wrapped around her arms, but they soaked through within minutes. The EMTs came in and she acted like they weren’t even there. She just kept apologizing to me. Telling me how sorry she was for killing our baby… a baby I’d never wanted in the first place. I begged her to hold on until they got her to the hospital, I begged her to try. But she didn’t even make it to the ambulance. I begged, but she died anyway.”
The room is quiet now, utterly silent but for the soft sounds of Jacey’s breathing. I close my eyes, and behind my eyelids a movie plays out. The movie of my life. The movie of the night that destroyed me.
“There was so much blood,” I murmur, seeing it like it was yesterday. Some emotion has slipped through my voice, but only a little. I’m still in check. For now. “I’ve never seen so much. Emma’s entire bed was covered in it. The towels were soaked, my clothes were soaked. It was all over my hands, my face. Her mom was screaming on the phone with emergency dispatch… her dad was crying. Emma and I were on her bed, and she got weaker and weaker so fast, and then she kept trying to tell me something, but she couldn’t get the words out. But I finally figured it out.”
I turn and look at Jacey. “She was saying Cris’s name.”
Jacey opens her mouth, but closes it again. There’s nothing she can say.
“I ignored it. I pretended I didn’t hear. Instead, I just told her that I was so sorry that I’d pressured her. I told her that I loved her and that I would always love her no matter what had happened with Cris. Nothing else mattered in that moment because I knew she was dying. I knew she only had a few minutes left, and I didn’t want to spend those minutes being ugly. In the end, all that matters is life. You forget the ugliness, you forget the pain. Just for one moment.”
My eyes burn and I look out the window, seeing Emma’s face. She was so beautiful, even then, even with her lips blue and her eyes wide and scared and sad. Her body was so slight, so cold as I held her.
“She died in my arms.”
Jacey is utterly silent, horror in her eyes. I don’t know what else to do but keep talking.
“I was drunk, but I’ll never forget how still she was. I didn’t even know she was gone at first… I was clutching her to me, pleading with her, and then all of a sudden I realized that she wasn’t answering. I pulled away from her, just a little, and she was like a rag doll. Her eyes were empty.” I pause, taking a deep breath, filling up lungs that don’t deserve the oxygen.
“She died while I was holding her, and I didn’t even know it. I don’t know when she took her last breath. Even at the end, she deserved so much more than me.”
“Jesus.” Jacey breathes, and horror is in her eyes as she looks at me. She finally sees me for the monster I am, but I don’t get any satisfaction from it. “Dominic, what she did wasn’t your fault. You were young and scared and you asked her to get an abortion. You didn’t ask her to kill herself. She did that on her own.”
“I did do it,” I argue firmly. “I a
nnihilated her. I pushed her. She loved me so much, and all she wanted was to be with me. I practically pushed her into Cris’s arms by neglecting her. It was my fault. And then all she wanted was for me to forgive her, and I made her do an unimaginable thing. She couldn’t take it. She couldn’t live with the guilt.”
Jacey reaches over and grabs my hand again, her fingers small and cold. She holds it and I let her, but my heart is cold and empty. For the first time since it happened, I’ve told someone. And it doesn’t feel good.
“No one knows,” I add limply. “Her parents don’t even know. She didn’t leave a note. All she left were those fucking poems about death. I didn’t see the point in telling them all of the ugliness.”
“It might’ve given them some closure,” Jacey points out hesitantly. “They’ve probably been torturing themselves, wondering why she did it.”
“That didn’t occur to me,” I admit shakily. “I was so wrapped up in my own grief. After the funeral, they moved away. Mr. Brandt got a job in New York City and they moved to New Jersey. They couldn’t stand to stay in the same house where she died.”
Not in a house where one room was covered in their only daughter’s blood.
“I don’t blame them,” Jacey answers quietly.
“Me either,” I agree. “It’s one of the reasons I moved to California and rarely come home. Trust me, I totally get it.”
“And Cris,” Jacey says hesitantly. “You’ve never talked to Cris about it?”
“Fuck no,” I spit angrily. “I forgave Emma for what happened, but I’ll never fucking forgive Cris.”
“You’re carrying so much anger and hatred still,” Jacey points out slowly. “You blame Cris, you blame yourself. You’re mad at Emma, you love Emma. Those are a lot of unresolved emotions to carry, Dom. You’re not being fair to yourself. When we hate someone so much, we think that we’re hurting them. But we’re not. We’re only hurting ourselves, because carrying that much ugliness around is toxic.”
A knot forms in my throat, heavy and hard. I can’t swallow past it, and my eyes sting. I look up at the ceiling, I look out the window, I look at the floor. Anything to avoid looking at Jacey.
“Dominic,” she says softly. “Look at me.”
Reluctantly, I look at her.
“It wasn’t your fault that Emma died. She died from something she shouldn’t have done. If you’d known, you would’ve tried to stop her.”
I nod stiltedly. At least that much is true.
“And you can’t keep blaming yourself for such a terrible accident. Because it was an accident, Dominic. Emma wasn’t in her right mind. She was just a kid herself.”
I take a breath, and it’s ragged in the dark.
“She couldn’t live with the guilt. Before she started asking for Cris, she kept crying incoherently about the guilt. I told her that I’d forgiven her and she just shook her head. She couldn’t forgive herself and she couldn’t trust me to forgive her, either. So she killed herself. I might not have cut her wrists, but I killed her all the same.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jacey
My chest literally hurts at the look on Dominic’s face… at how shattered he is… at how shattered he’s always been.
“You’ve carried this for so long,” I finally manage to say. “This has been so much to carry, Dominic.”
He sits slumped in the chair by my bed, his hands in his lap. I’m holding his hand, but his fingers are limp. He doesn’t even think that he deserves comfort. It’s heartbreaking and I feel mine shatter into a million tiny pieces.
“Dom,” I whisper. “You didn’t push her into Cris’s arms. This wasn’t your fault. She made the choice. Not you.”
He doesn’t say anything, he just closes his eyes. I see that his hands are shaking, and it breaks my heart. Such a young girl, so much loss… and Dominic. God. He was so young, too. Too young to carry such a heavy burden.
My head pounds, but I ignore it as I roll out of bed and kneel in front of Dom.
“Look at me,” I tell him softly. He keeps his eyes closed, so I repeat myself more firmly. “Look at me, Dom.”
He opens his eyes, and they’re so, so dark. Filled with grief, filled with guilt, filled with unimaginable things.
Things that he has actually seen.
“Is this why you won’t get close to anyone?” I whisper, gripping his hands hard. “You think that you’re not fit to be with anyone because you killed Emma. Is that right? That’s what you think?”
He just stares at me.
“Yes or no?” I ask bluntly.
There’s a beat, then he nods once.
My heart breaks and I feel a tear slip down my cheek. “And you can’t trust anyone to not hurt you like that again, right? She crushed you. She died and left you… she left you with all of that guilt, and you were furious at her for that, right?”
He closes his eyes.
“Yes or no, Dominic?” I know I sound harsh, but he has to face this or he’s never going to get past it. I’m no expert, but even I know that.
He nods once more.
“Anger is a normal response when someone dies,” I tell him softly. “Trust me, I know. Remember when I told you that my last boyfriend did something terrible? Well, he was a psychopath. And I shouldn’t have gone back to him, but I was weak and I did. And when I did, a good friend of mine died because of my actions. He died because he tried to save me. And when he died, I was so pissed. I was pissed at him for trying to help me, but then I was pissed at myself… because if I wasn’t so weak, he wouldn’t have had to save me in the first place.”
“It couldn’t have been your fault.” Dominic finally speaks. I stare at him.
“No? I tell myself that. But I’m not sure I believe it. Not deep down. That’s something you know a lot about, right?”
Dominic nods. “But your situation is different than mine.”
I shake my head. “No, it’s really not. Someone I love died because of a decision I made. You think someone died because of you. The difference between you and me is that my friend really died because of me. Emma died because of a choice she made herself.”
“And your friend made that choice himself, too,” Dominic tells me, his voice as dark as his eyes. “He chose to try and help you.”
“I know,” I tell him softly. “It’s something I think about every day. Because he was close to me, because he loved me. That guilt is hard to carry. But it’s also something I know that I have to let go… and I’m working on it. I’ve been working on it ever since that horrible day. You have to let this go, Dominic. You have to try. Regardless of why, Emma is gone. You can’t bring her back, and it’s not going to help anything to carry the blame forever. It won’t help.”
“I know,” he says softly. “You have to believe that I’d do anything to let it go. I feel chained by her… by what happened. I feel trapped by everything. It’s around me all of the time. I can never get away from it. Every day, I know what I did to her. I love her and I hate her at the same time. I feel like there’s a wall in front of me and I can’t move forward. I would give anything to break through it and be able to move on.”
“You can do it, Dominic,” I tell him urgently, squeezing his hands. “You really can. You just have to go through the motions.”
“I don’t even know where to start,” he answers limply. “When I met you, when I got to know you… for the first time since Emma died, I felt a need to get close to someone, to you. But even you can’t save me from this. You can’t help. No one can. And if you try, Kira was right… you’ll drown right along with me.”
“You want to get close to me?” I ask quietly, incredulously, because his actions have been so contradictory lately.
“I did,” Dominic admits, looking away. “But then I realized that it’s not fair to drag you into my toxic life. That’s when I ended things. Not because I really wanted to, but because you deserve far, far better than me.”
“Why don’t you let me decide t
hat?” I suggest gently. But Dom just looks away, his jaw clenched. I can see in his eyes that he’s thinking of Emma, and of how he let her in and she decimated him. How he thinks that he killed her. How he thinks he wasn’t enough to save her, as if that was ever within his power in the first place.
The look on his face, so sad, so vulnerable, so hopeless… it shatters me. And so I do the only thing I can think of to do.
I kiss him.
I take all of my sadness for him, all of my heartache, and I channel it into a kiss. It’s the only thing I know to do. I want to take his sadness away, I want to absorb it in the only way I know how.
At first, Dominic is limp, sitting still as I envelop him in my arms. But after a minute, his hands slide up my back and I feel the warmth of his fingers gripping me. His breathing picks up, ragged and harsh.
“You shouldn’t be with me,” he tells me again desperately. But I ignore him.
We kiss again and again, and our hands are everywhere, a sudden and feverish frenzy. I want him. I want to take his pain and replace it with something good. He deserves that… if only I can make him see. His heart beats against mine, loud and strong as I run my hands down his chest, down to his belt buckle.
“I don’t think I can do this,” he rasps against my ear. “I want to. But I don’t think I can. I haven’t been able to… be with anyone since Emma died. I have this debilitating fear of trusting someone again. After Emma died, I didn’t handle my grief. I suppressed it. I focused so much on the fear and the guilt that it grew into a monster that I can’t get past. There’s something inside of me that’s broken, Jacey.”
I stare into his eyes, into his heartbreak, and I melt.
“Then let’s fix you.”
I silence his protests with my lips as I crawl onto his lap and suck down his pain. I breathe it in as my hands stroke him everywhere, his face, his chest, his arms. I take his guilt and his sadness and his