Page 121 of What You left in Me

“Oh my God,” I gasp, the truth finally getting ahold of me. “How do we recover from this, Finn?.”

A muscle jumps in his jaw. He steps closer, and everything in me does the stupid reflex where fear and want shake hands. “You’re shaking,” he says.

“Because I’mangry, not because I’m a wind chime.” I swipe at another tear and hate how my voice trembles. “ Shecan’t get away with this. She can’t cause an earthquake and act like everything’s okay.”

He takes his phone from his pocket and offers it like a weapon. “Look again. If doubt is going to make you bleed, at least bleed over the right blade.”

Something snaps. I snatch it and then—without thinking, without planning—I hurl it toward the grass. It spins once in a neat arc and thuds into the lawn, screen-down, like a little black fish that leapt wrong.

“Good,” I say, breathless. “Now we can talk without you handing me exhibits.”

He stares at a spot behind me, then back at me, and I realize, devastatingly, his eyes have welled up.

I want to kiss him. I want to hug him and make him forget everything. I want to do both in an order a therapist would frown at.

My throat closes. “She needs to suffer.”

“She’s your mother.”

The words are simple and they atomize me. I hate him for being right, and I hate him for using it like a key.

“She can’t just get away,” I say, quieter now, because shouting feels like I’m spending oxygen I can’t afford. “she ruined you and Richard. She took from you so maybe I can take from her. I know she’s a selfish bitch…” My laugh is ugly. I used the word bitch for my mother. I know there’s no going back from this now. “but she still loves me. Maybe if something happened to me… that would be the perfect revenge.”

He steps in. I step back.

“I will destroy the world if something happened to you.” he says, and his voice goes low enough I feel it in my bones, “Iwill make sure to tie you up and never untie if you say that ever again. It’s not your fault so, why would you punish yourself?”

“You saying it doesn’t make it better.”

“I’m warning you,” he says.

“I hate you.” It flies out before I can decide if I mean it. It lands between us and hisses like something alive.

He nods, like I’ve set a chess piece where he expected. “Okay.”

“Don’t youdarebe calm about this.”

“I’m not calm,” he says. “If you want to hate me for loving you, then go right ahead.”

Loving you.

“You think that if you control the narrative you control the pain? How could I ever look you in the eye ever again? How could I ever make up for any of…”

“By being right here,” he says simply, and I feel it, damn him, in the softest part of me.

We stand there with the ruin of the night between us, the table, the slap, Richard’s eyes, and the green of the lawn trying to pretend everything grows back the same after a wildfire. The lake does its glass thing. A bird has the audacity to sing.

“I won’t apologize for telling the truth,” he sighs. “I can only apologize for hurting you with it.”

Why would you apologize?I don’t say anything. I don’t trust myself with words any longer.

I close my eyes because that is unfair and precise and exactly where I live. “I can’t do this anymore,” I whisper.

He steps back. It feels like a cliff edge moves with him. “I’ll give you time.”

“I don’t want your time,” I snap, because as soon as he offers it, I want to smash it. I don’t want to keep feeling the guilt I’m feeling every time I’m with him.

“You want me,” he says, and it shouldn’t sound like mercy.