There will always be things in life that happen, that somehow bring you back to reality. Hits you so hard and wakes you up to realize just how short life is. Seeing Paisley so close to death, scared me awake. Karma getting me worse than I ever could have imagined. For every time I hurt someone, every time I said something that didn't have to come out of my mouth, or did something that made someone cry because I either didn't care at all, or I was trying to prove something to myself, this is what I get for all of that.

I've been sitting in the waiting room for what feels like days. It's been about twelve hours since the ambulance showed up. The paramedics stormed into the room and took her from my arms, to bring her back to life. Although she wasn't gone, I know now what it would feel like to completely lose her. Watching as they carried her to the bathroom and stuck a tube down her throat to wake her up enough to throw up the pills she took, into the bathtub, was by far the scariest, most gut-wrenching, hardest thing I've ever had to see.

She wasn't completely back or aware of anything when they took her to the ambulance on the stretcher, but she had thrown up enough of the pills, the paramedics were able to tell me she would make it. I had gotten to her in time. I followed them to the hospital and haven't been able to see her since I got here. I've asked the doctor not to tell her that I'm here when she wakes up, but to tell me when she's coherent enough for me to visit her, which I haven't heard yet.

This has been the longest and hardest night of my life. I know that nothing will ever be the same. I will never be the same. A reality check that I surely never wanted to have, but it was more real than I could even comprehend. I know that not all of this is my fault. I know that she's been through enough in her life, that everything adds up into this one big mess she probably didn't think she could ever get out of. But knowing I was part of the reason, even if it was just a small portion of it, knowing exactly how I treated her and talked to her just two days ago, makes me feel sick to my stomach.

I don't want to imagine that the last thing I could have ever said to her was that she never meant anything to me. I will thank God every day for the rest of my life, for not allowing her to die last night. Because if she did, I would never be able to live with myself, knowing she left this world not knowing the truth. As she wrote in her letter to me, she said she didn't want to leave thinking she was never what I wanted, because she wasn't strong enough for that. And she left, thinking exactly that, because I didn't want her to see that my heart was broken. It was broken because I thought lies were the truth, not wanting to trust who I should have, believing that people don't really change. That once you wrong someone, you will forever do just that. But I shouldn't have been so closed minded. I should have seen the bigger picture. I knew she was a different person now than she was in high school. I should have known that she didn't have it in her to play me. If her trust issues could have told me anything at all, it should have been that she was not only a different person than she used to be, but a better one. All in all, all I could really say for myself, is that I am selfish.

I'm hunched over in the chair I'm sitting in, elbows resting on my knees, staring at the same spot on the floor below me for God knows how long now. My eyes are burning from the florescent lights, from crying so much and the lack of sleep over the last forty-eight hours, I can't for the life of me even try to look anywhere but the ground, until someone's feet stand on the spot my eyes have been locked on.

"Harry—Harry." Paisley's Dad is bent down in front of the chair I'm sitting in, shaking my shoulder trying to get my attention. "Why don't you go back to the dorms and get some sleep? You look awful—Paisley's going to be fine."

"When did you get here?" I ask. "Did you see her?" I all of a sudden feel wide awake. I need to know how she's doing. No one will tell me anything.

"She's fine," he sighs. "I've been with her for the last few hours."

"How is she?" I stand from my place, looking down the hall where her room is. "Can I see her? And I'm not going back to the dorms. I'm not going anywhere."

Without warning, he wraps his arms around me in a tight hug. "Thank you. The doctor said you got to her at a good time. There's no damage to her vital organs from the pills and she's going to be fine, all thanks to you."

My chest tightens with his words, and I know I'm about to erupt with more tears. I can feel myself starting to break again. I've never in my life felt as weak as I do today. Unsure how much longer I'll be able to withstand the pain. I swallow hard to hold to myself together, as I hug him back.

When he pulls away and looks at me, I can see just how much pain he is in, which makes everything worse, but I know I have to be strong right now. Or at least try to appear like I am. "When can I see her?"

"She's sleeping right now," he explains. "She's had a rough couple of hours of throwing up." He sits down in the chair next to the one I was sitting in, motioning for me to sit with him.

I watch as he opens the photo book Paisley gave to me, which I still haven't been able to look at. He stares at the first page for a while. Pictures of us from high school, along with a few little notes I gave to her, scanned onto the page. I can tell that he is thinking as he looks at it and I wish I could say something.

"It's hard to believe that you're this kid," he says, breaking the silence, flipping to the next page. More pictures of us from high school. "I always thought Paisley was happy. But the difference in her after you came into her life, made me see that she never really was. At least not the way she was when she was with you." He sighs, remembering the past. "It's weird how you never see the truth when you need to. She came home one day and she just wasn't the same. She'd never tell us what happened. All I knew is that she didn't have you anymore, or her friends. She wouldn't get out of bed. Nothing would help. Do you know anything that could help me understand why she keeps doing this? Did you know she tried to commit suicide then too?"

"She mentioned it," I answer. I can hear the pain in his voice wanting to know the truth about his daughter. I don't know whether telling him the truth will help any, but I can tell he needs some answers, and maybe talking—just talking, will make me feel better. "She was dared to date me in high school. It's the only reason we were together. I found out and it didn't really end well. I thought everything she said to me was a lie." Saying it out loud, stings. It sounds ridiculous to even imagine that I didn't believe her even then. 

He closes the book and looks at me with sad but serious eyes. I'm having a hard time deciphering what he's thinking and I hope he says something soon. "Like I said, you never see the truth when you need to. Let me guess—Jenny?"

I nod my head. "She's the reason things ended this time too," I tell him, looking down at the floor. "She told me this lie, which I stupidly believed. I don't know why I didn't trust Paisley. I should have, I know that now. I was just so afraid that if it were really true, I couldn't show that she hurt me again." Tears start welling up in my eyes again. I know there's no point in trying to stop them. I'm too emotionally unstable and exhausted to care. "She wanted to tell me the first time around, but I wouldn't even let her, and this time when she did, I wouldn't listen. This is all fucked up. I don't deserve her. I screw up without even trying."

I hunch over in my seat, hands in my hair. And every time I open my eyes, I watch the tears fall to the floor beneath me, through blurred vision. I all of a sudden feel like my presence to her is just toxic. I really don't deserve her. I can feel myself start to shake at the thought. I'm not good for her. Each time I was in her life, somehow she ended up in a hospital bed for trying to take her own life. She deserves better than that.

When I stand up to leave, he stands up with me. "She loves you," he says urgently, making me turn back around to look at him. "Trust me. This wasn't all because of you, Harry. Everything in life happens for a reason. You know the truth about everything now. Allow yourself to see it." He hands me the book, and as much as I want to stay here right now, I'm too ashamed of myself for everything. I know I need to leave. As I walk down the hall, I can hear him calling me. "You're good for her, Harry. Don't forget that!"

*

I don't feel any better now that I've showered. I can't seem to shut my eyes, no matter how hard I try to sleep. There's nothing but a sinking feeling inside of me, and I wonder if this is how Paisley had felt. Because I feel like I've lost everything and I don't know what to do about it. 

I've lost her. And even though it's not in every sense of the word, it feels like it. Her almost dying was like watching myself almost die with her. Two broken hearts shattered in the same extraordinary way, they'd only ever beat the same offbeat sound, breathe with the same little bit of air capacity in our lungs, and if she was to die, I'd be right beside her, because she was my sun and I was her moon, and without one, you can't have the other. Opposites, yet very much the same. Striving for the same thing in life. The only thing that would ever matter. To be happy. And to do that, we had to have each other.

It's now that I realize I just need to trust her. And although I feel like I'm toxic and I don't deserve her, I know that it's just the sinking feeling, the one that's making me drown in my own negative thoughts, that's making me want to believe that she's better off without me. She said I just needed to look at this book she created for me, and I would see that everything was real. I would find the truth and know that every single pessimistic thought that has ever crossed my mind, would be changed if I just looked at this book.

Paisley is a complicated girl. She has a way of showing how she feels in a way you have to read between the lines to understand. I'm only seeing this now, and I wish that I could turn back time and see it as clearly as I do right now. Paisley's Dad was right. You never see the truth when you need to. Every time she lied, she tried to tell the truth. Every time she hesitated, was her way of telling me that there was much more to her than I could have ever expected. She was always trying to tell me something, and I just didn't open my eyes wide enough to see the truth she was so obviously trying to show me.

Getting comfortable on my bed, I turn on the music on my cell phone to drown out the eerie silence of my dorm room and finally allow myself to open this book Paisley put so much effort into making for me. Flipping each page, it's obvious to me, not just how much time she put into it, but how much love was put into each page. Every single one, she had put some kind of emphasis on how each memory of ours was important with some kind of quote or song lyric that went with that particular day. Or even wrote out a joke I had told, or something one of us said that meant something, or made that specific time seem just as special as it was.

I can't help the tears that are continuously falling. I should have looked at this book days ago, seeing that I would have seen the truth. Felt it and known it in my heart, that she just wanted to put all our broken pieces together, in a way that only we would ever understand. Because this book, in all it's entirety, is us in a nutshell. Proving to me that even with all the bad times we've been through, that even when things weren't perfect, which she clearly has captured within these pages, that there would never be anything that resembles a story like ours. That everything we are, has been unique, and nothing—nothing would ever be, or feel as good, as when we're together.

As I turn to the last page, Ever After sounds through the speaker of my phone, reminding me of how disastrous we have been for each other, but we'll always be each other's ever afters. And this last page, this very last page, makes me see everything with a little more certainty. That we both have always known from the start that somehow there would be times in our lives that we wouldn't be together, but it would always be each other in the end.

I'm staring at the words I wrote her. I remember writing this to her, and it's my handwriting for sure. 

"And if ever there is a time in our lives, I don't get to call you mine, I want you to know that it'll still be you. It will always be you, Paisley. Only you.

Forever yours,
H. xx"

And underneath it, she has written something out to me. "

"This is the part where I get to tell you, that it has always been you. It will only ever be you, Harry. Only you.

Forever?

Forever."

I can't get out of bed fast enough. What am I even doing here? I should be at the hospital with Paisley. I should be sitting next to her, holding her hand, not being selfish and feeling sorry for myself at a time like this. Paisley needs me, and in all honesty, I need her just as much. I need to prove to her that no matter what she goes through in life from now on, that I'm going to be by her side. Through thick and thin and good times and bad, I will be by her side to experience it all with her. I don't care if things get ugly. I don't care if we fight. She can yell and scream at me all she wants, tell me she hates me and cry. She can continue to lie to me if that's what she needs to do. I will love her either way. As long as I'm with her, I don't care what happens. I'm going to prove myself to her that I believe every single word that comes out of her mouth. I trust her with everything that I am. 

*

I quietly step into her hospital room, shutting the door behind me, trying not to make a sound as I look across the room at her, seeing that she's still asleep. She looks peaceful, yet sad in her slumber, an IV injected into her skin, giving her the fluids her body definitely needs. As I step closer to her bed, I notice her black eye is almost back to normal color. The black and blue now faded to a light yellow. Still visible enough to be reminded of what happened to her.

Seeing her in this bed is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Reality kicking me hard in the gut, at how we really take for granted the time we have with someone. We must never tell a lie. We must never give someone a reason to cry, or to believe that they are inferior to anyone else. But to always make sure to know they are loved, no matter how mad you are at them.

Although I'm uncertain how she'll respond if she wakes up, I get into the bed to lay with her, needing to be close to her. Even though the bed is small, I make myself fit laying on my side, wrapping my arm around her, making sure not to hit any wires or tubes in the process. 

This is where I always should have been. Even when I didn't think so, the last time I said those words, when she wasn't meant to hear them, I knew part of me knew I was saying the truth. I felt the same relief that night, wrapping my arms around her, that I do now. I should have known on that first day that I saw her, that I was a goner. That my heart would wrap itself around her the way it did in high school and nothing else would ever matter. My love for her would always win over how much I hated her for what she did. I always knew that. My heart belongs to this girl. It always has and it always will. No one would ever get this piece of me the way she does. I will do everything I can to make sure that if she gives me just one more chance, I will always make sure that she is happy.

For the first time, I feel like I'm really seeing her. The truth that she has apparently hidden from me, visible to me now, seeing scars all the way up the inside of her arm that she's not laying on. I can't for the life of me believe that this is her as I trace my fingers over a few of them. A true testament to everything she's suffered from. It's clear she did everything she could to hide that part of her life. My heart sinks at the thought of her doing this to herself. But it's obvious how old the scars are now. That she has not cut herself for a while now, and as much as I hate seeing what is in front of me, I'm trying to think positive. That it's possible to get better and come back from something as horrible as she had it.

She shifts a little, making me look up from her scars and into her eyes, to see that she is now awake and staring at me. My heart starts to pound, unsure of how she's going to react to me being here, laying next to her. I don't say anything hoping she will. I can't decipher the look in her eyes, but even in her grogginess, she looks beautiful.

"Hi," she says, quietly.

"Hi."

A/N: Karma is coming to an end very soon. Only a few chapters left. It's so hard to believe! I'm sorry it's taken so long for Harry and Paisley to come together again, so hopefully you're still with me!

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