What The End Looks Like | ✓

18: the impact

Maddox

My face hurts, but it's no one's fault except my own. I just wanted to feel okay again after she said no. A wave of pain slices through me at the thought of Cassidy saying no. How she broke down into tears and I stupidly thought they were happy tears. And then she said no before leaving. She left. I'm not in the wrong here.

What reason could she have had to say no? She either loves me or she doesn't.

I look over at Paige who is still wearing my shirt as she stares at the door Dean walked out of silently crying. I had no idea that she was seeing Dean.

"You're with him?" I choke out, horrified by what I've learned.

Her shoulders sink with defeat and she nods once admitting the truth. "You heard him, it's over."

The next question I ask is a dumb one and I know that, but I can't stop it from coming out. "Why?"

Paige sniffles pulling her hair back, "Because he made me feel okay again. Dean understands the parts of me that you refuse to acknowledge. They broke me. Dean put me back together again without even realizing what he was doing. Why did you come here last night?"

My eyes catch the scars that curl up her neck, the rest hidden by my shirt. They're cruel and hard to look at. "Because I wanted to feel okay again."

Anger lights up her eyes as she twists back to look at me, "Congratulations Maddox. Now we'll both be alone and fucking miserable."

"I didn't make you have sex with me. You made that decision all on your own," I fire back feeling the guilt start to swarm inside me.

She hits me hard with an open palm, the sting of pain better than the guilt. "You lied. You said you guys broke up, you didn't say you fucking proposed to Cassidy. I'm not a consolation prize; you left me to stay with her."

My jaw hangs open, "I didn't leave you. You told me to go after Cass."

"Because I could see how fucking miserable you were staying with me! Maddox, last night was the first time since I came back that you didn't treat me like a china doll. You were in love with another woman and I wasn't blind. I could see it and everyone else could see it. That's why I told you to go after her."

This is a conversation we should have had months ago. "Paige..."

She shakes her head, "No. You don't get to look at me that way. I'm sorry that me coming back was such a shitty inconvenience for you. I wasn't going to make you stay with me if you didn't want to."

"It wasn't an inconvenie-"

"Then why wasn't I enough for you? Why couldn't you look and touch me like you did before. Am I that repulsive now?" Paige demands to know, pulling off my shirt to reveal the scars. I'd left the lights off last night so I wouldn't have to look, to feel, to think. There's no avoiding them now.

There's long and short ones, some puckered and others are smooth, they cover most of her porcelain skin. My mouth grows dry and I avert my gaze. Her scars are a reminder of every way I failed her.

"I spent one thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven days in that hellhole. And do you know what I thought about every single second of every single day? What got me through the beatings and torture?" I can hear the pain and raw emotion in her voice. I don't want to hear her say it. "You, Maddox. I thought of you. I pictured us hiking on that stupid mountain where you proposed to escape what was really happening to me. It's a technique they teach you to keep you from breaking if the enemy ever captured you. You were my escape."

Everything I've been working so hard to push down is threatening to come back up, "Stop. Paige stop please." I beg, trying to keep my guilt from consuming me.