One I doubted would ever stop hurting.
One that a part of me would forever hate her for.
“It kills me that you made that choice. That you felt like you had to.” I could barely grind out the words. I had to hold back the bitterness that still coiled inside.
Hot tears seeped onto my chest, and a sob suddenly hitched in her throat.
Regret slammed me. The truth was, I didn’t have a clue what she’d been through. The desperation she’d felt. Right then, I knew her regrets might be as great as mine.
I rushed to shift her, tipped up her chin, and forced her to look at me. My thumb gathered as much moisture as I could. “Please don’t cry, Aster.”
Her eyes were wide. So wide that I could see all the way down to a void that radiated from within, where ghosts haunted, and wraiths foraged for the weak. “If I could go back, Logan, if I could go back and change it all. Stop you from leaving that night—”
She choked on the agony that poured from her mouth.
I grappled to get her closer, and my hold tightened on her face. My voice dipped with emphasis. “I thought we just said we were never looking back?”
Fat droplets escaped the edges of her eyes and slipped down her cheeks. An edge of hysteria screamed through her body.
Sorrow a stampede that stormed her spirit.
Her fingers dragged over my shoulder and down my arm, like she was trying to get me to understand. To see. “There’s a piece of my heart that will always remain there, Logan. Broken and lost.” Another sob ripped from her, and she pressed a hand to her hemorrhaging chest. “And I don’t want to leave it behind or forget it. I won’t ever forget it. I won’t.”
Misery clutched and bound and tied us tighter than we’d ever been.
Wrapped our spirits and traipsed through our minds.
So much loss.
I dove for her, my arms fierce around her, pulling her as close to my chest as I could. My nose pressed into her hair and the words fumbled in a litany of our sins. “I’m sorry, Aster. I’m so fucking sorry.”
My heart heaved with the velocity of our mistakes.
With the circumstances that I’d tried to control but had failed.
Her head shook, and she climbed up to straddle me, and I shifted all the way onto my back. My hands shot to her waist.
She was so damned gorgeous as she looked down on me.
Dark brown hair wild around her face. Her throat still trembled with the silent cries that twisted her mouth.
But I thought maybe—maybe a piece of her heart had been freed.
“I love you, Aster. Through it all, I’ve loved you.”
Her tongue swept over her soggy lips. “And I’m terrified that my love for you is going to ruin us both in the end. That my being here…”
I flew up to sitting. I had one hand wound in her hair and the other linked around her waist. The words rushed out with a curl of severity. “This time, we’re not giving up anything, Aster. We’re not sacrificing or yielding or surrendering. We’re taking what’s ours.”
This was the greed I was giving into.
And I wanted it all.
The sheet was twisted around her legs, and every inch of her exposed skin was bare.
Her heart beat at a ragged sprint.
Wrapping me whole.