Chapter Twenty-Two

I wasn't sure where I'd ended up.

When I'd started running, I hadn't had a destination in mind. I'd run until my legs ached and my lungs struggled to keep up with the rapid beating of my heart.

And now I sat on the cold ground, with my legs pulled up to my chest, the letter long gone. I wasn't sure when I'd eventually dropped it, letting it drift away from me.

But it was gone and by now, some random student knew that my mother hated me and wanted nothing to do with me. And I didn't care anymore.

I was beyond broken. There was a loneliness inside of me, a cavernous space where my heart had been ripped out of my chest and thrown onto the sidewalk where I'd stood, reading that stupid letter.

Tears ran freely, and I sniffled before wiping my nose on the sleeve of my blazer.

I heard footsteps a second before a figure emerged to my left. But I didn't look up. There wasn't enough strength in me to lift my head and acknowledge another human being. I didn't even feel human.

And honestly, I didn't care that someone was there, watching me fall to a million pieces on a random part of campus.

"Selene?"

I didn't respond. The voice was familiar, though I couldn't place it. I didn't even bother to exert the energy to try. Everything was too heavy, too much, like tons and tons of weights, just pressing in on me, forcing me down.

There was a sigh, then a whisper of clothing as whoever stood there moved closer, sliding down the wall next to me until they sat there, a silent, oddly comforting presence.

"I found your letter," the person said. I could tell they were male. Part of me prodded the rest of me to turn, look, and see who my companion was.

But the other part asked what the point was. And the other side stopped asking questions, gave up, just like everything else had.

As if to be cruel, the person sitting next to me read the letter aloud, the words haunting me again, but this time, they were allowed into the space around me, into the air I breathed.

"Dear Selene," he read, his voice soft as he murmured my name.

"We were so surprised to receive your letter. Especially after our last in-person discussion.

"And while we appreciated your words and your sentiments, they are not well received. And they mean nothing. Not anymore.

"We do not honor or respect your feeling that you are still a member of this family. You are not. And we thought we'd made that clear during our last meeting.

"As such, your request that we be present for this 'Parent's Day' has been denied, as we are no such thing to you. Our only son, Oliver, has died and we are grieving his death and would appreciate no further contact from you.

"Best Regards,

"Vincent and Natalie Anders." The bitterness in the voice's tenor was clear by the end of the letter. It leeched into every word, lacing them with venom. I wasn't sure if he was speaking it to me as my mother would have spoken it, or if he was showing his hostility toward the letter and its contents.

By the time he finished rereading the letter that had torn my heart into shreds, the tears were falling down my cheeks again. I'd been unable to stop them, even if that was the only thing in the world that I'd wanted to do.

"I think you're better off," the voice said. "Without useless trash like this in your life."

For the first time, a sound left me. A harsh, choking sob left me, crawling out of my throat before I could stop it.

A hand brushed my shoulder, tucking a lock of my hair behind my ear. "I'm so sorry that this is happening to you, love." The raw emotion in the voice nearly had me wanting to turn and look at whoever was speaking. But I didn't.

"One day, this will all make sense to you. I promise you that, love." I couldn't tell if the voice was angry or sad. Perhaps both.

"I wish I could tell you everything. I wish I could make all of your pain vanish with a snap of my fingers. I wish so many things, love, especially when it comes to you. And I can't grant any of them, no matter how desperately I want to."

His hand brushed against my cheek, and I closed my eyes, the warmth of his fingers making me feel something other than heart-aching grief. His words had stirred a feeling inside of me, something deep and hidden and unfamiliar.

I turned to look into his eyes, needing to see who sat beside me, who wanted to fight the world for me. But his hands gripped me, tight. He forced me to look at him. Opened his mouth. And then the world went blank.

The thoughts slipped from my brain, like water leaking through my fingers. Impossible to keep hold of, even though I desperately wanted to.

It felt as if I'd blinked.

But when I opened my eyes again, I was alone. My tears had dried, leaving my face tacky and my eyes swollen.

I wondered if I'd been dreaming. But the conversation, the words they'd spoken and the emotion that they'd spoken with had felt so real.

On the ground next to me, the letter from my mother and Vincent lay in the grass, as if it'd been there the whole time. An indentation in the grass told me I hadn't been dreaming, that there had really been someone here, wiping away my tears and telling me that they wanted to make everything better.

But I had no idea who.

Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: AzTruyen.Top