The Five

by Lily White

“I’ll love you forever, Rainey. Protect you. Take care of you. There’s nowhere you can go where I won’t find you.” Lifting his head to look down at me, he said, “You and me forever. Do you understand that? Fuck everybody else. They don’t matter. They never did. Just you and me, okay?”

To love another person is to slip beneath their skin. If they hurt, so do you. If someone attacks them, you’ve been attacked as well. If they are drowning, your head is being dragged under water right beside them. And if they die, you might as well start digging your own grave because a part of you belongs to the ground. That is what love is. That is how I loved Rainey.

Rainey had a lot of problems, but the monster she’d created wasn’t one of them. I would love her. I would take care of her. I would protect her and I would always find her. Forever doesn’t mean until the end of our lives, it means until the end of eternity.