Iâm sorry.. Iâm sorry.. Iâm fucking sorry.. I should have been there â I should have told you.. It was all words, nothing but words, her best friend was dead, and no amount of apologies could make up for the fact that he hadnât been here, that Teddy had lied. Maybe sheâd gone through life putting faith in the wrong people; in people she couldnât truly depend on when it mattered the most, and all she could think about was how foolish that made her in the face of everything. Her best friend was dead; and even sheâd lied to her, for years..â Teddy, someone she told everything to, had lied to her â And Jasper, the piece of herself that sheâd forever refused to be apart from, had left her. Heâd bailed as if it were nothing at all, as if her entire being hadnât been crushed under the weight of her other half being ripped from her so brutally. âStop..â stop.â She started the moment she heard the apology, her teeth grit so hard she felt her teeth grind against one another. âShut up!â Her eyes closed tightly while the tone of her voice rose louder than necessary. âJust shut up! I donât want to hear it, Jasper.â I donâtâŠI..ââ She fought for breath, but it hurt, everything hurt. Her lungs burnt as the machine worked to feed more oxygen into her system with every quickened breath, âYou left. You just..â left. Devon was ..ââ Murdered? She still didnât even know, didnât understand what happened. Palm pressed to her chest, avoiding where she thought the burns were as she coughed, pressing in as if it would help her breathe, panic and anger setting into her bones, but her tirade didnât stop. âYou werenât here..â you werenât here whenâŠâ w-when I needed you.â Heâd had ever chance to be here for her, and sheâd burn alive over and over again if it meant her heart didnât feel like this. âI..â I donât need.. you now.â She did.
She was right. She was so fucking right, and there wasnât even a small part of it that he could argue against. At the end of the day, it was a surprise that Jasper had any true friends left. If they needed him to bail them out of jail, he was there. If they needed him to stand in a fight, he was there. But when they truly needed him, like Cinda had needed him, he wasnât there. He couldnât be there, for his own selfish reasons. âI know, I know,â he spoke in a hushed voice, head ducked down. His gaze focused on the tiled floor beneath his shoes, unable to bring his gaze back up to her. Lacing his fingers together before him, he squeezed his hands so tightly that his knuckles started to turn white. Sitting there in that hospital chair, listening to one of the closest people to him talk, Jasper started to hate himself more than he had ever before. He was a coward, made obvious by how he had left Cinda here to deal with this, to become a victim herself. An apology had left his lips when he sat there, perfectly healthy, and she wore the marks from the fire, and the loss of Devon. Finally, after too long of staring at the tiles, Jasper had lifted his gaze, snapped up to stare across at her. I donât need you now. The words hurt in ways that he couldnât quite explain, could never explain. It drove home too hard, twisted his gut in uncomfortable ways. âCinda, you donât---,â mean that? But couldnât she? Didnât she? She had every right to say the words, to banish him from that sacred spot beside her. They had been close, closer than heâd ever been with another soul, and he had walked away as if it meant nothing. âIâm not....I wonât leave you. Iâm here, alright? And Iâm not going anywhere this time.â But did it still mean the same?