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by
Selena .
Read between
August 22 - August 23, 2023
I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. –F. Scott Fitzgerald
The way they think they’re saving you, but they’re destroying you. The way they keep you from saving her after you destroyed her.
my notebooks where I wrote poems about her like some pathetic lovesick dog chasing after a
bitch in heat. We should burn the whole fucking town to the ground with all the Darlings in it.
I turn and walk inside. I don’t know why I care. I watched two guys fuck her. I gave them permission. I made sure to watch, so I knew I could never want her again, never think she was mine. I broke her on purpose, but piece by piece, I’m the one falling to pieces.
“You matter to me.” A ghost of a smile tugs at my lips. “The old Harper would have liked to know that.” “Not you?” he asks,
“No,” I say. “I don’t care about her, or you, or if you’re lying through your teeth. I could matter to you, or the whole town, or no one, and it wouldn’t make a difference. I don’t matter to me.”
“I don’t expect you to understand,” I say. “I have my reasons for doing what I did. Sure, Dawson’s shit, but he doesn’t even live here. I’m guessing he’s only back in town because you brought him back for me. But I don’t need revenge.”
“What do you want it to be?” he asks. I shrug. “I got what I got. The twins and Dawson got what they got. What do you get?” “I get you.” A snort escapes me. “I’m your punishment?” “Aren’t you?”
He fanned the ember into a flame of life inside me, reminding me that there is a reason to keep breathing. I hate that he helped me after everything he’s done to ruin me. He doesn’t deserve credit for putting two pieces back together after he shattered me into a thousand. And most of all, I hate that when I gave in and stopped fighting and did whatever he wanted, he didn’t
lose interest. He didn’t try to finish me off and walk away. He tried to heal me. And maybe, in some small way, he did.
“What are you saying?” Baron asks at last. “Now you’re not done with her?” Duke asks. “Did it seem like I was done with her all summer?” “I thought you were just worried about her body being found,” Duke says. “Or that she’d go to the police.”
I wouldn’t have followed her to his house. And she wouldn’t have tried to fucking kill herself. Rage swells inside me when I have to come to the realization all over again that she’d be better off if I didn’t know she was alive. But it’s too late now. I do know, and I’m going to make it right. Somehow, I will.
Now he’s going to pretend he’s the heroic big brother when he didn’t do shit for them. I’m a better brother to Lo than he ever was.
“You just don’t want to admit in front of Royal that you couldn’t resist a chance to bang his plaything.”
Preston a Q-tip with my saliva when he asked. Just in case. After all, she was with two Darlings around the time I was conceived. Which means I couldn’t only be Preston’s cousin, but his aunt, which is somehow even more disturbing. I know I’m not, but still. A DNA test will put both our minds at ease.
“You said I was dead to you.” “I looked for you all summer.” “I wish I was dead to you,” I choke out. “I wish we both were. I will never look at your face without picturing the moment you’re dead and I can finally breathe again.”
“Then let me breathe for you until you remember how. Because I’m not going anywhere, Harper.” “Why?” I whisper. “Why did you come back? Why do you keep coming back?” “I didn’t want you to die.”
I just stare at him, trying to get my breath, but he’s taking all the air in the room for his huge, oversized body and huge, oversized presence. “I did,” I say. “I fucking loved you, Royal. Is that what you want to hear? You want me to lay my heart out for you to decimate that, too? I told
you, I won’t fight. I already laid it out, and you smashed every bit of it under your bootheel until there’s nothing left to feel anymore. You may not believe me, because you don’t think anyone could love you, but you’re wrong. Someone could have. Someone did.”
“You don’t fucking know how I felt,” I snap. “You may not think you’re worthy of love, and maybe you’re not, but that doesn’t mean someone can’t love you anyway. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t choose to love you despite it, whether you deserved it or not. That was my choice, and I paid for it. But I don’t love you anymore, Royal. You’re not worthy of even my shitty trailer park love anymore. That was your choice. You have no right to keep coming around here, stalking me like it’s some cute game between us. It’s not a game, Royal. I fucking hate you. I hate your face, I hate your stupid couch, I
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“I don’t want to be a Dolce girl. I know you boys are used to sitting on the throne by yourselves, but this year, I’ll be up there with you. You can still be the kings. But make way for the fucking queen.”
I’m one of them. I’m a basic bitch, no one special. I don’t even have money. Which makes it even more important to have friends.
I’m the last person who should be passing judgment.
I’m the one who doesn’t deserve Royal.
I tell myself what I’ve been telling myself all summer. I can’t break more than I’m already broken.
“Why keep you apart? It’s too late. I failed. We all failed.” “Failed at what? Protecting him from me?” “He’s been sucked into your orbit,” he says. “You were a passing sun whose gravitational pull was strong enough to pull him out of his solar system and into yours. Now you’re stuck with him. He can’t leave you alone. But I think you
know that, Jailbird. I think you knew all along that men like Royal don’t love twice.”
“Maybe,” Baron says.
“But it’s the kind of hate that makes a man crazy, that makes him kill a man for hurting you, bail you out of jail at three in the morning even though he’s the one who got you thrown in, haunt the streets at night looking for your ghost when you’re dead.”
Royal, who said he’d moved worlds for me. What else has he done that I don’t even fucking know about?
“You’ll keep orbiting each other, your own little solar system with only two planets, until you stop fighting it,” Baron says. “The longer you resist it, the more damage you’ll do. Both of you.”
thinking about what Baron said. He’s right. I will never be free, even after forgiving Royal. I keep trying to cut the ties, to cut him away, but he’s still part of me. Not because of Royal himself, but because of me. Some terrible, twisted part of my heart still belongs to him. Our love may be infected with hate, poisoned and toxic, but it’s still there. And even if I could somehow get rid of it, if I could shut myself off the way I did before, when I didn’t feel anything, my mind wouldn’t be free. Even if I never see his face again, I’ll never stop going back to what happened, never stop
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Some part of me never really left the swamp that night. Some part of me died there. Another part of me lives there still, caught in the nightmare of a night that never ended.
And I don’t know how to end it without end...
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“She didn’t break up with you because of it. She’d take you back. Go talk to her.”
“Don’t you think I’ve fucking tried that?” “Then try something else.”
“I’m not just going to kiss you, baby,” he says. “I’m going to fuck you, and you’re going to like it.”
I’m safe. I’m safe because this is all he wants, and he can’t take anything more. I know, because this has happened before. There’s nothing else to give. This is the end of the line, the last thing, and I’ve given it all up. Now I can relax and know that I don’t have to fight.
“Stay with me, baby,” he says. “I’m right here. Look in my eyes. Don’t go away.”
“Thank you,” he whispers, his breath warm on my wet skin. In that one breath, one heartbeat, the space between heartbeats where life is measured and decided, I’m weightless. I’m lost and I’m found, I’m destroyed and renewed, I’m insignificant and infinite. I am his, and I am free.
I can feel his warm cum sliding down my cold thighs like tears of shame. I didn’t think it
was possible to hate myself any more than I already did, but somehow, Royal makes it possible.
My stomach hollows out, and I can hardly breathe. I turn to Preston, my veins icy hot with rage. “Because of you,” I say. “Was that your plan all along? To send me in there, knowing they’d target me, so they’d leave your sister alone?”
