Make Me Hate You

by Kandi Steiner

“This is me saying that I would set myself on fire to bring light to all of the dark places within you.” – Beau Taplin

I didn’t know a heart could break like that. I didn’t know it was possible to feel every sensation of your chest splitting wide open, of your heart bleeding out, without a single puncture wound being made.

I didn’t know what it was to be wanted so desperately that each kiss felt like a fire searing every inch of skin covering my bones. I didn’t know what it was to tremble and shake, to be lowered back into pillows and sheets with hands so careful and confident that every other thought left my head completely. I didn’t know what it was to feel a mixture of extreme passion and somehow familiar safety all at once, to succumb to something so forbidden, and to love it like nothing I’d ever loved before.

He was something between the boy I used to love and the man I’d never know, familiar and unreachable all at once.

That’s what his gaze did to me, what it always had done. It stripped me bare.

Except that she’d just asked me to dance with her brother, and the last time he’d touched me, I’d been so burned I still hadn’t fully recovered.

And the moment our skin made contact, a flood rushed through me. It was searing hot. It was icy cold. It was all-encompassing and enough to send a wave of chills down every inch of my body as he pulled me closer, pulled me in, wrapped his other hand around my waist and settled his dark eyes on mine as we started to sway. I swore I’d never see that boy again, and now he had me in his arms — just like he did that night so long ago.

All I wanted in that moment was to burn my graduation gown and the picture of me and my mother on my bedside table and the memory of Tyler’s hands on me and the entire town of Bridgechester, too.

“You’re always beautiful. How’s my girl today?” My heart fluttered at his response, as it always did when he spoke to me. He revered me like a queen, it seemed, always showing me kindness and care. I’d never dated anyone like him, where there were no games, no pretenses of trying to play hard to get. We knew from the moment we met that we liked each other, and we didn’t bullshit. We dated, and became exclusive after a week, and from that moment on, I never had to wonder what I meant to him. Healthy relationships were weird.

“I said win her over, not make her second in line to marry you if I don’t.” We both laughed at that, but I didn’t miss the way his forest green eyes watched me, curiously — like he was wondering if I’d been thinking about us like that. Thinking about marriage. Jacob and I had only been dating for a little over seven months, but I knew after just three that he was serious about his intentions with me. Whereas I was intent on going slow, having fun, enjoying just dating, I could feel his need for more as time passed. He’d casually brought up what kind of ring I would want, how I would want to be proposed to, what kind of house I’d like, where I’d like to set roots, if I wanted kids… It was all normal, necessary conversation for a couple in a healthy relationship. But for some reason, every time we went there, I clammed up.

Tonight is the joint bachelor-bachelorette party, and we have a lot to do.” “Joint parties, huh?” Jacob smiled. “Can’t bear to be parted from Oliver for even one night.” “We have the most fun when we’re together,” she said easily, as if nothing else made sense. “Why wouldn’t we want to celebrate our wedding together as opposed to being apart?” Jacob smiled even more genuinely then, and his deep green eyes found mine, like he understood completely.

It reminded me of high school, sneaking wine coolers from her mom’s stash and dancing in her backyard or out on the dock by the lake. It reminded me of long, hot summer nights in the pool with her and Ty, staying up until the sun rose again, the days blurring together. And it made my chest hurt with the longing to go back to those days, to that specific day, and to never cross the line with Ty. I wondered what it would have been like if Morgan would have been in her room that day my mom left, if I would have found her instead of Tyler, if nothing would have ever changed between us. I stopped dancing, my arms falling to my sides, eyes fluttering open as the bar came into focus again. I’d missed so much with Morgan. I didn’t know why it hit me at that moment, but it did. Sure, she’d visited me in California, and we’d met up on girls’ trips, but we hadn’t gone to the same college like we’d always dreamed of. After what happened between me and Tyler, I’d fished out an acceptance letter for the summer session at San Francisco State University that I hadn’t thought twice about once I got accepted into BU. Lucky for me, they accepted, and though Morgan begged and pleaded with me to reconsider, she said she understood when I told her I wanted to get out of this town, out of this state, out of this area of the country and start anew. But because of that choice, we hadn’t been in the same sorority like we always thought we would be, or danced at the same parties, or stumbled home fr...

And when I looked at him, every thought I’d been trying to shake off came back full force. I looked into the eyes of the man I didn’t know, of the boy I used to know better than anyone, of the friend I’d lost. Of the friend who’d hurt me.

And that I thought back to him, too — to that day in his room, to the way his skin was hot and sticky with sunscreen, to the way his lips were warm on mine, to the way it felt to be touched by him. But what was the point? He hadn’t been able to heal the wound my mother left. No one could do that but me. And when it came to what happened between me and him, it was even more pointless to bring up. Because he’d taken it all back. He’d said it was a mistake, that he was sorry, that he never meant for it to happen. A day that had killed me and also brought me to life within hours meant nothing to him. It meant nothing to him — that he’d comforted me, touched me, kissed me, ruined me. It meant nothing to him that he’d made me feel more loved than I ever had in my entire life right after I’d convinced myself love wasn’t real, and then he’d ripped it away the very next day, taking everything I cherished along with it. Tyler Wagner had scarred me. And I didn’t need to remind myself of that anymore than I already did.

Tyler’s eyes were a golden-brown in the evening light, a shade I hadn’t seen in years. I remembered it though. I remembered the way those little flecks of gold lit up when the sun was angled like this, from summer nights so long ago that they seemed like another lifetime.

Tyler laughed at the last of my message, but his eyes were light and playful when they met mine. It felt… good — to talk to him, to not be at each other’s throats. It felt warm and comfortable and right. It felt the way it used to when we were younger.

All that mattered was that I locked eyes with Tyler Wagner, and I asked him the question that had kept me awake for seven long years. “Why did you ignore me the day after my mom left?” All the color drained from Tyler’s face, and for the longest time, he just stared at me, unblinking. Then, he blew out a long breath, shaking his head and tearing his gaze from me. “Don’t do this, Jaz.” “I deserve to know.” He sighed, his eyes falling to his sneakers, and I felt a mixture of anger and betrayal bubbling up inside me like a volcano. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be out here, laughing and reminiscing with Tyler Wagner. Suddenly, I remembered all too well the way it felt to have his hands on me, and then to have him avoid me, and finally, to have him reject me. “Why?” I asked again, angling my body toward him. “Why did you avoid me, and then tell me that it was a mistake, that you didn’t mean to…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence, and emotion bubbled up even more. I had no control over any of it, and I hated when my eyes glossed over, though I refused to let a single tear fall. “And why did you do this? Why did you spend the day with me yesterday, and take me here today, and why are we suddenly talking after all these years? We’re all buddy-buddy, reminiscing, pretending like…” I huffed. “And last night…” I swallowed, my throat thick, tongue heavy. “Last night, you… you…” Held me? Touched my face the way you did all those years ago? Leaned in like you wanted to kiss me, like you...

“I know what happened between you and Tyler.” All the color drained from my face. “I’m sorry I didn’t say something before now,” she rushed. “I just… he told me in confidence, and I knew you were hurt over your mom, and I didn’t want to bring up something that obviously meant nothing, and I figured you’d be embarrassed.” She kept going, but my mind was sticking on the words tumbling from her mouth at a hundred miles per hour. He told me. Meant nothing. Embarrassed. “… bring it up, you know? But then you guys just stopped talking, and you never came home, and I missed you and I missed us and I guess I just thought that you coming back home, that you guys could put everything behind you, and we could all be friends again, you know? Like the old days.” She smiled weakly. “The Wagner Kids — Plus One.” I think I smiled. I think I managed to clear my throat before I asked, “Tyler told you?” Morgan grimaced. “The next morning. You were still asleep in my bed, and we were both down in the kitchen, eating cereal. He was all quiet and broody and then he told me what happened.” I blinked. My head was whirling, and I needed to sit down, but there was nowhere to sit. “I was furious at him,” she continued, waving her hand in a gesture. “Obviously. I mean, you and James had just broken up. And then your mom, God,” she says, shivering. “I just knew you were in such a dark place. And then for him to do that, to… to sleep with you,” she whispers. “I was horrified.” “You told him you were ma...

Tyler told Morgan. Morgan knew, all this time. And it was her who told him he was wrong, that he shouldn’t have done what he did, that I wasn’t ready. Was that why he took it back? Was that it all along? Did he tell me it was a mistake, that it didn’t matter, all because Morgan told him I wasn’t ready, that I wasn’t okay, that I wasn’t in the right head space to make decisions? And he had a crush on me? Why didn’t he ever tell me that? How did I never see it? Is everything I thought about what we were, about what happened between us, a lie? Question after question assaulted me, not just at the flower shop, but all through the rest of the day, too.

Why did I never ask him? Why did I just run? Why didn’t I go back to him, hold his face in my hands, and demand that he tell me why he was pushing me away? Why didn’t I refuse to leave, refuse to accept that that night meant nothing to him when I knew it meant something to me? Another pang of guilt found me when I realized where my thoughts were wrapped up again. Because I understood why Tyler did what he did, but it didn’t absolve him in my mind. It pissed me off. I was furious for him, for me, for what we maybe could have had.

“I also discovered today that I am a terrible person,” I whispered into the microphone. “I guess we all are, aren’t we? At least, when we really break ourselves down to the molecular level. When we push aside all the sunshine and bullshit, and look good and hard at who we are, at the decisions we make, at the things we feel — things we would never say out loud or confess to anyone else.” I shook my head, eyes losing focus where I stared at the shape of the recording, a flat line now that I wasn’t speaking, a little green spike when I began again. “Maybe, at the core of every human being, there’s a dark, hidden world. Maybe it’s not what we do for a living or our hobbies or our background or our family that makes us who we are, but rather what exists in that dark little world that no one sees. And we can’t ever show it to anyone — not to our best friend or our family or our significant other — because we know in our gut that if anyone ever saw what truly existed there, they’d run. They’d run and curse us and scream at us to stay far, far away.” My chest hollowed, breath sticking in my chest. “Maybe we’re all monsters,” I whispered. “Just selfish, righteous things living in a nightmare, blaming our past for why we eat everyone around us alive, and feeling like we deserve something better, something holier — just because we’ve survived this long.” My bottom lip trembled. “He did it to protect me,” I whispered, knowing I would never use any of this for anything, that no one el...

At that, I huffed, leaning over to snatch his wrist in my hand and tug him out the door. “Just come on.” That earned me a chuckle, and I felt that vibration all the way through my ribcage and to the very core of who I was. That dark, monstrous core.

Maybe it was working. Maybe I could break down that barrier, after all. Maybe, we really could be friends.

He stepped into me, and I swallowed, tilting my chin up as my heart pounded so hard that I knew he could feel it through the veins in my neck. I knew he could feel how I trembled under his touch, how I shivered from the rain and the wind and the tornado that he had always been in my life. Back away. Pull away. Stop this right now. But I couldn’t. I felt the heat of his breath on my lips, and I gasped, parting my own, feeling the most intense mixture of warning and desperation swirling within me that I had ever felt in my life. It was elemental, primal, powerful. Unstoppable. His hands slipped into my wet hair, tilting me even more toward him, and his bare, wet abdomen brushed my chest, eliciting a sharp inhale from my lips. It was his nose that touched me first, warm and wet, sliding down the bridge of my own before his forehead melded with mine. His hands gripped harder where they held my hair, and that’s when I realized. He was shaking, too. His arms trembled as I wrapped my hands around them, holding onto him, begging him not to pull away as much as I begged him to put distance between us because I knew we should — and I knew I couldn’t be the one to do it. Every new beat of my heart was a flash of memory, of a past life, searing through me like hot sparks as I gripped him tighter. I saw what once was, what maybe could have been, and more than anything, what never was. My breaths were ragged and shallow, eyes still shut, every other sense on high alert. Tyler’s lips wer...

He smiled, but it slipped quickly. “You’re a warrior.” I chuckled, glancing out the window as Boston faded away and we continued south. “I don’t feel like a warrior,” I confessed. “Most times, I feel like a lost little girl, like I’m trying to find my way home but keep coming up short.” Tyler nodded when I looked at him. “I know that feeling,” he said softly.

He paused, chewing the inside of his lip as he thought, and the way the sun came through the windows of the truck, the way his hair was disheveled and unruly, the way the Sagamore bridge sprawled before us, welcoming us to the Cape as it always did — it grounded me like nothing ever had before. My stomach tightened at the warmth of it, at being in a car with the boy I grew up with, heading back to a place where we had made so many memories.

Now that we knew what we did, now that we’d cleared the air, now that I knew he wanted me back then just as much as I’d wanted him — it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t be just friends with him. And I couldn’t be more. Which meant we only had one option of what we could be. Nothing. And that word sank into my skin like a tattoo with each new mile we drove, until I could no longer ignore it or pretend it wasn’t true.

“Okay,” I said, glancing at the waves crashing on the beach behind the cottage with a longing sigh. I hadn’t been back on the Cape since the summer before senior year when I’d come with Morgan and her family, and being back was already flooding me with memories of my last summer as a kid. My last summer with Morgan and Tyler. Part of me wanted to run to the beach, or to our favorite ice cream joint, or to the old lighthouse we loved to climb after dark. I wanted to run back in time, to that summer, to that girl I had once been. But Morgan’s mom was right — I was exhausted, in more ways than she knew, and maybe a shower would help right me.

Jacob was my person. He was my everything, and had been for months. How could I have lost sight of that? How could I have so easily let him slip from my mind, filling that space with the one boy I’d sworn I would forget? I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw myself out the window just to save everyone in my life from the disaster I’d become.

I knew exactly how to move, how to rub my clit against the firm edge of the pillow just right. The orgasm was already building before even a full minute had passed, and I picked up the pace, desperate to reach my climax. Tingles shot like sparks in my chest, firing through my nervous system to every part of my body. Just a few more flexes and I knew I’d come. And as soon as the recognition hit me, my dream assaulted me like a whip, cracking against my back, my inner thighs, my heavy and swollen breasts. The pillow between my legs was suddenly Tyler, and a soft moan broke through me at the vividness of it, at how I could imagine his hands on me, his body under mine, his eyes staring up at me as I rode his thick and throbbing cock. That was what undid me. My orgasm burst through me like an explosion of powder and flame, filling my chest with black smoke as I cried out and rode it as long as I could. My hips flexed, glutes aching with how much I leaned into the feeling, and I couldn’t be quiet. I moaned and gasped and screamed as quietly as I could, knowing it wasn’t quiet at all, and all with the vision of Tyler beneath me and inside me and surrounding me in every possible way. When my hips stilled, the room came back to life. I heard how heavy I was breathing, saw how mussed the sheets were all around me, how every other pillow on the bed was on the floor except for the one still perched between my legs. My panties stuck to me, completely drenched, and I rolled onto my back...

I sighed, shaking my head and climbing out of bed to clean myself up. After a short, cold shower and a fresh change of clothes, I crawled back into bed having convinced myself that it wasn’t a big deal. So what, I masturbated thinking of Tyler. People masturbated to things they couldn’t have all the time — to porn, to visions of their exes, to celebrities, whatever. It was completely normal, and it didn’t mean a damn thing. Somewhere between that thought and me slipping back into sleep, I thought I heard a thump against the wall lining my headboard, and a groan of a man giving into temptation. But I was sure it was just a dream.

It was too late. Those were the words that flashed like little caution lights in my mind as I ran, my legs burning, chest aching, breath coming shorter and shallower with every new step. It was too late to be out for a run on the beach. It was too late to be out and alone, period. It was too late to be awake when I had another full day of wedding activities tomorrow. And it was too late to ever have a relationship with Tyler Wagner.

I’d woken with the determination to stay far away from Tyler, to let him go, to let the past go. And instead, I’d been forced to walk down the aisle to him, to pretend to be his bride, to let him take my hands in his and stare into my eyes and not say a single word but say everything I’d ever wanted to hear, too. It was impossible in that moment to not picture it, to not wonder what it could have been like, what we could have been like. And it knifed me open, right down the middle, spilling my guts with irreparable damage. I sucked in a harsh breath, running faster, as if that would help me. But as soon as I took three more steps, my mind was wandering again — this time, to the rehearsal dinner, where I’d sat at the restaurant with Morgan and her family, and I’d been a slave to the fantasy of what it would be like to really be a part of it. To be Jasmine Wagner. To be Morgan’s sister-in-law. To be Tyler’s wife. I couldn’t escape the whirlwind of what ifs as I sat there, eating and laughing, listening to Morgan tell Oliver stories about me and her and Tyler growing up. Robert teased me. Amanda offered me the last cheddar roll in the bread basket, because she knew they were my favorite. And Tyler sat across from me, his hand around a glass of scotch, a lazy, content smile on his face as he listened and chimed in on our childhood stories. It didn’t matter that he didn’t talk directly to me. It seemed he was doing the same thing I was, trying to put distance between us, to blo...

It was a fog impossible to fight through, but more than anything and at the root of it all — I hated myself. Because all it had taken to show my true, dark, and fucked-up morals was one trip back home. And one thing I knew for sure, one truth swimming low and acidic in my gut, was that I had to call Jacob tomorrow. And I had to break up with him. It didn’t matter that Tyler had a girlfriend, that our time had passed, that we would never be together. It didn’t matter that, surely, it was being here that was messing with my mind, and had I stayed in California, none of this would have happened. All that did matter was that I realized, in painful clarity, that I was not okay. I was not ready to date someone as seriously as I was dating Jacob. I didn’t deserve his love, his time, his doting attention. I didn’t know what I wanted, or who I was, or where I was going because I’d spent the last seven years running from where I’d been. It was the wake-up call akin to a bucket of ice cold water to the face, and I couldn’t run from it, no matter how I tried. My nose stung with the urge to cry, but I fought against it, picking up my speed, instead. My muscles ached in protest, and I knew I was pushing too hard. I knew I’d be sore as fuck tomorrow, but I couldn’t not run. I couldn’t not put my body in pain and fatigue. It was my only chance at escaping everything inside my head.

And in that silent, dark moment on the beach, I felt the universe inside me shift. And I knew things would never be the same.

Perhaps I’d sensed him, or always known he’d be there — like no matter how far or fast I ran, it’d always be him I’d come back to.

“You okay?” Something of a laugh left my nose at that, and then my eyes welled with tears. I shook my head, casting my gaze over the dark water again. “No,” I whispered, and the fight was useless against the first two tears that fell hot down my cheeks. “I am far from okay.” Tyler pushed off the banister at once, his arms reaching for me, but I backed away like he was poison, nearly falling in the process. He stopped, holding up his hands as I crossed my arms over my middle. “Don’t,” I warned, shaking my head. “Come here.” “Please, don’t touch me.” “How can I not?” he asked, stepping toward me with purpose. “You’re hurting, and it’s killing me, and I don’t know how to fix it other than to pull you into me and try to shield you from whatever it is that’s bringing you pain.” “It’s you!” The words were too loud, too raw, and more tears flooded my eyes as they lingered between us. I sniffed, wiping my face and sucking in a cold breath. “Can’t you see that?” I asked, quiet this time, my voice something of a whimper or a plea. “It’s you who brings me pain. It’s you who is killing me. It’s you, and us,” I added, motioning between us. “It’s this thing that never was, but always is, that never will be and will never not be.” The air around us stilled, even the soft distant sound of the waves quieting, as if the entire world decided to stop spinning for this one specific moment. And Tyler looked like I’d just socked him in the jaw. I shook my head, face contorting with emotion. “I h...

“Please,” I begged, fisting my hands in his shirt to hold him closer but still trying to shove him away. “Please, just make me hate you.” Tyler’s knuckles found my chin, and he tilted it until I was staring up at him through wet lashes. Just the sight of the pain in his eyes made another surge of emotion assault my chest, and I winced, rolling my lips to fight off more tears. “Only if you make me hate you first.” Tyler stilled when the words came from his lips, and I tilted my head, confused. But before I could ask him what he meant, he grabbed my chin and crashed his mouth to mine. That kiss… that connection of lips, of heat and want, of regret and longing, of a past life and a present one — it hit me like an anvil to the chest. My next breath was stolen, and I’d barely registered that Tyler was kissing me before his tongue skated against my lips, seeking access, and I opened, letting him in like there was no other option. There never had been. It had always been him. It had always been us. And that kiss — that passionate, painful, bruising kiss told me that he knew it, too.

When we were alone, he stood across from me, chest heaving, eyes devouring me like he was a wolf and I was his prey.

The first time Tyler touched me, all those years ago, it was with gentle reverence. He’d handled me like a girl with a broken heart, which was exactly what I was. His kisses had been slow and soft, his hands hesitant and trembling, and I could still remember the look in his eyes when he laid me back and entered me for the first time. They were wide, careful, sensitive, longing and pure. But Tyler didn’t take me gently tonight. Tonight, he punished me with every kiss, with every bite, with every tight grasp. It must have been true, what he’d said on the beach — he wanted to hate me, too. And I felt it with every new touch, every new kiss, every new taste. He wasn’t worshiping me. He was claiming me. Like I’d ever had a prayer of being anyone else’s but his.

“No,” he commanded. “Don’t get shy on me now, Jazzy. I want to see you. Open those legs for me.” Fuck.

I moaned at the sight of him stripping off his shorts and freeing his erection. It sprang forward, thick and long, and when he wrapped one fist around it with his eyes still watching me, I panted, my hand sliding down to rub my aching clit. “Jesus Christ,” he said, still stroking himself as he moved toward me. “You were touching yourself like that last night, weren’t you?” My hand stilled, just for the pause of shock registering through me. He smirked, still moving slowly toward me. “You fucking were. I heard you, your deep moans and hushed cries of pleasure. I thought it was a dream, but it sounded so real. It was, wasn’t it?” I nodded, lips parting, my fingers moving over my clit again at the sight of him towering and slinking toward me like a snake in the night. He only pulled his hand from himself when he was close enough to touch me, swatting my own hand out of the way so he could take the job. And when his warm fingertips pressed into my clit, rubbing it in a gentle circle, my entire body convulsed at the touch. “Who were you thinking of?” he demanded. I sucked in the urge to moan, holding my breath and fighting everything inside me that wanted to cry out at his touch. “You.” “Goddamnit,” he husked, and his warm fingers pressed harder, still circling as I writhed in his grasp. “Do you know how fucking hard you made me? I had to fuck my hand twice last night, and still couldn’t empty myself fully.”

“Fuck, it’s hot how turned on you are right now.” “Please, Tyler,” I begged, and I swear, I’d never begged for anything in the bedroom before in my life. But I needed him, and I didn’t even know what I needed first — his fingers inside me? His mouth on my clit? His cock buried so deep I could see the stars? I wanted it all, all at once. I needed him to consume me like a black hole. I desired nothing more than to die by his touch.

I trailed my fingers up to his tip, spreading the bead of pre-cum there over the sensitive skin before I wrapped my fist around him again and felt him flex into it. “That’s it, baby,” I whispered against his mouth. “Fuck my hand like you fucked your own last night.”

“Please.” Another plea. Another desperate call to fill me, to claim me, to ruin me. And this time, he answered.

We hadn’t even thought about a condom, hadn’t even considered that it could ever be anything but just all of him inside all of me. Raw. Bare. Violent.

Tyler slowed then, filling me softly and purposefully, inch by blissful inch. And when his thumb pressed hot and hard into my clit, circling it in time with his thrusts, I came fast in a throbbing, pillow-biting, all-encompassing explosion of stars. That orgasm wasn’t just physical, though I felt it invading every centimeter of my skin, my muscles, my nervous system, my being. But it didn’t stop there — it seeped into my heart and into my soul like a hot, persistent flood, filling every crack and hole and hollow emptiness. It was complete and total devastation. And I was bound to him.

I knew his hands would bruise my hips, that his teeth had left marks on my neck, that I’d forever feel an emptiness from where he was inside me now — but I didn’t care. I loved it. I craved it. I wanted more, more, more — all of him, all of this, all of us. It was wrong. It was betrayal. It was everything we were never supposed to do. But when Tyler thrust into me again and again, then three final, hard times, filling me up completely before he pulled out and stroked his orgasm out until it spilled hot on my ass, I knew we’d take whatever punishment, whatever hell we’d wake up to the next morning. We’d always choose this, time and time again, over and over, no matter what. If I thought it was hard to forget Tyler Wagner before, it would be impossible now. He’d ruined me. Thoroughly and utterly destroyed me in every consumable way. And I had never wanted anything more.

Tyler Wagner was in bed with me, and everything about waking up next to him felt good and right and real.

“Fuck, Jasmine,” he said, touching places on my neck, my collarbone, my hips and thighs. “God. I’m so sorry. It looks like I fucking mauled you.” I blushed, giggling and wrapping my arms around his neck. His brows were still furrowed when he met my gaze, but I just reached up to press my lips to his. We both inhaled at the contact, sweet, content sighs coming from our chests in the next breath. “It was the best mauling of my life,” I whispered.