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9

LUCA

I ’M BACK IN THE dark room with the floating twinkling lights. I spin in place, searching through the tiny specks, looking for one that’s brighter than the others. They all look the same, no matter how hard I will my eyes to tell me differently.

A sudden hollowness forms in my chest when I realize she’s not here with me. I feel like all the air in my lungs has been stolen from me. My pulse beats heavily on the side of my neck and my stomach twists into knots.

Loss, unequivocal and indisputable. That’s what I feel. Jules was never mine, but I still feel the loss of her as if she was.

“NOOOO!” a tortured scream comes, and I recognize it’s hers.

“Jules!” I spin around looking for her and see nothing but black space and tiny sparkles.

“Oh, God, no, please!” she sobs brokenly.

I turn back the other way, still looking through the darkness, and don’t see a damn thing. Where the fuck is she?

“Jules! Where are you? ”

“Help me,” she yells. “Please, someone help!”

A roar leaves my lips at her agonizing cries. I have no fucking clue where I’m going, but I start running, yelling Jules’s name over and over again.

“Luca! No! Oh, God, please don’t hurt me! NOO! Luca!”

“Goddammit,” I bellow. “Tell me where you are!”

“You don’t have to do this.” She’s crying now with hiccupping sobs, and it’s just as crushing. “No, no. Don’t do this. Please, oh, God, Luca, please!”

Her pleas pierce my ears and slice through my heart, leaving the life-giving organ dead. It still beats, but it’s pointless. I come to a stop and drop to my knees when I realize Jules isn’t screaming for me to save her, she’s crying for me to not hurt her.

Pain, brutal and unforgiving, has me falling to my hands. Remorse, shame, guilt, and grief paralyze me in my hunched position.

Jules isn’t with me right now, but her memories of that day are. The pain she went through, the terror of the unknown, and the despair of being alone. All that angst because of me. I put her through those things. I made her feel helpless and afraid.

I may not have access to my own memories of that day, but having Jules’s are enough to know they’ll haunt me for the rest of my life.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” I whisper to no one.