Chapter Text
There’s a warmth in her belly when she wakes. Not the good kind - the kind that fills you up after a day spent with family and friends, or that grows beneath the eager touch of another person’s hands. No, this time, the warmth licks and writhes inside her like a vibrant set of flames, sets the hairs on the back of her neck pricking with unease.
There’s no logic, no reason. It has a name, though – the feeling. Has her reaching for her phone and calling her best friend before reason slips in.
The monotonous tone, though, does nothing to put out the fire. The “You’ve reached Rebecca Welton’s phone, please leave a message after the tone,” does nothing to temper the dread building and burning up her spine. She pushes herself off the bed, the air cold against her skin without the covers. But her belly’s still warm, still molten, and no matter how hard she tries, she just can’t shake the feeling that something is terribly wrong.
“Sassy?” Keeley groans. “What the fuck? It’s 1 AM!” She calls Keeley without thinking too; there’s no room in her head now for anything other than fear.
“Can you go and check on Rebecca?”
“Why?” she asks, but it doesn’t take long for the fear to creep into Keeley’s voice too. “Has something happened?”
“Nothing,” she starts, before, “Maybe…something, I don’t know. I’ve just got a really bad feeling, and the last time I had a bad feeling she ended up falling into a fucking canal, so- ”
“Okay, okay,” Keeley interrupts. “I believe you. I’ll call her, and if she doesn’t pick up I’ll go over to her place, alright?”
“Thank you,” Sassy breathes, collapsing back against her pillow. “Let me know if she’s okay?”
“Of course I will. Bye, Sass.”
When the phone clicks off, she almost expects to feel something else, cool waves washing over the warmth as she passes her worry into another set of hands. Instead, all she’s left with is an unsettling chorus; the concern in Keeley’s voice ringing in her ears, the sound of her heart knocking painfully against her ribcage, and that feeling, still writhing, churning in her gut – it consumes her. Her head feels heavy, vision blurring at the edges, a throbbing ache behind her eyes, but she can’t bring herself to sleep. For a while, time nothing more than a fragile illusion, she stares at the crack in her ceiling, memorizing every angle, every curve.
With the sun barely rising, she jumps in her car wearing yesterday’s clothes and drives, in spite of Keeley’s silence, because there’s a crack in her ceiling with a 90-degree angle about halfway across the room, a curve at the end that looks a bit like the shape of a crescent moon, and a feeling in her gut that feels more tireless, more frantic with every beat of her heart.
*
“I can’t do this anymore,” he says, and she stills, barely daring to breathe amidst the silence.
His voice is slow and lethargic, almost as though it pains him to speak; when she tilts her head, catching the line of his gaze, the pain in his eyes is far harder to bear.
“What do you mean?”
She knows what he means. Knows the pinch of his brow, the sadness in his face he’s tried so hard to conceal beneath his gentle touches, hot kisses pressed across the expanse of her skin…mapping every freckle, every scar like he was committing her to memory; she’s tried to ignore it just as hard as he’s tried to hide it.
But there’s no room for ignorance now.
She could nod her head, pull him close for one last kiss, then let him leave, never question it, never ask him for the truth, but there’s a masochist inside her somewhere, pulling tight against the strings. She knows she’s treading on dangerous waters when she asks him, why, but then again…she deserves this, this pain in her chest she’s tried so hard to find a home for, a pain that only grows when he sighs. She should be used to the feeling now – another piece of her heart breaking, except she hadn’t known there was anything left behind.
For a moment, he doesn’t speak at all except in his eyes, the painful shine in them shifting into the realm of disappointment, and suddenly, she’s small again, lips tight, face dry but barely blinking away the inevitable; with the past replaying like a bad dream, she can’t help but wonder why she’d ever thought she could run away from it.
After all, she’s never known how to love very well.
“My ex-wife, she hurt me,” he whispers, and she flinches so hard her neck cracks, the sound echoing like a whip on white walls. “She cheated, but she stayed, even though her heart was with another man.” She closes her eyes after that, knows what’s coming before he says, “I think we both know where your heart is…and it’s not with me.”
There’s acceptance burning on her tongue before she swallows it, desperation crawling up her throat in its place.
You’ll be alone if he leaves.
“It is, it is. I- I’ll try harder, I’ll be better- ”
“You can’t.”
“I can, I swear I’ll be good to you. I’ll put everything into being with you, my whole heart- ”
“We both know that’s not true.”
She does know, as much as she knows that she’s selfish, a broken woman searching blindly in the dark for the life she’s always longed for, but that’s always remained out of reach. She knows, and yet she still wants to ask him to stay. To beg him to stay, the words building like a sob against her lips.
“Please, Matthijs- ” she starts, but he doesn’t let her finish, raising his hand in the air, letting it linger there, never touching her skin. He’s not Rupert. He’s never been Rupert, and she knows, even in the moment that his interruption is a blessing, his kindness saving her from another source of shame.
She feels a tear falling down her cheek all the same.
“You still deserve love,” he murmurs, stepping closer now, tugging her hands into his, rough callouses against her palms, “even if it’s not mine.”
He’s always been too good for her. Too gentle, too forgiving…too kind. She hates the part of herself that wishes he’d get angry. Yell out his frustrations, let them rip into her skin like lashes; maybe, it would hurt less. She doesn’t know how to tend to these kind of wounds, the hollow void inside her chest that grows when his touch falls away.
You’re wrong, she wants to say. I don’t deserve love. I used you, I never let you know me, I never let you see me. I’m nothing like the woman you love…but the words shrivel and die in her mouth, their bitterness burning her throat when she swallows – she cares about him too much to leave him with the truth.
In the end, she doesn’t remember him leaving, but she knows he has by the way the room feels colder now, the air, so still, so silent, observing her, outlining every single one of her flaws. She’s glad he left before he had the chance to see her fall apart, the pieces of her scattered like litter on the floor; her body feels so heavy still, even when its hollow, her limbs stiff and cumbersome on the kitchen floor, wracked with sobs she doesn’t have the strength to hold onto anymore…not now she’s alone.
She doesn’t remember leaving her house, getting into her car, but she knows she has by the rain on the glass, the tears in her eyes, so thick, so incessant she can barely see beneath them. She can’t ignore the voice in her head, though. The one that tells her the further she drives, the more the night will fade, become a piece of another person’s life instead of hers, the less she'll ask herself how many times someone can start over before they have nothing left.
In the aftermath, she remembers the rain, the flashing lights, blood pounding behind her eyes and a sound so loud it made her brain feel like it was pressed against her skull.
She doesn’t remember falling asleep.