Watched Me Suffer and Called It Growth? Goodbye Forever to All Four of You! Chapter 09

I looked into his black eyes.

Something in me trembled.

I drifted half a foot to the side.

He suddenly spoke. “Don’t move. I can see you.”

I said nothing.

He braced himself against the headboard and suddenly staggered to his feet, reaching for me.

His hand closed on cold air.

Loss flickered in his eyes. “I can’t touch you.”

My lips twisted into a sneer.

“Colin, what kind of act is this now?”

His head dropped. His breathing turned ragged.

“I-I’m not.”

He stared at my face as if he could never look at it enough.

“Paige, I’m not. I knew it was hard on the island, but I never thought it would be that bad.

Tessa. I already punished Tessa.

I did you wrong. But I know I was wrong. I really miss you so much.”

I looked at him with nothing left in my eyes.

“Colin, I don’t want to hear a single word of this.

Every time I think about it, I feel nothing but disgust.”

He dropped to the floor again. Color drained from his face.

Something stuck in his throat.

“I…

If-if I hadn’t done any of it, if I hadn’t married Tessa, would things have been different?

Would we… could we still be together?”

I frowned and thought about it carefully.

If none of it had happened.

I might still have been happy.

The sister Spencer cherished. The girl Garrett cared about most. The wife Colin loved.

Maybe there would have been a child.

A happy home.

But there were no ifs.

Those years they’d dumped me on that island, I had suffered. Really suffered.

I’d waited for them to see that I’d changed, so they’d come get me and bring me home happy.

When I finally got out, I learned the whole thing had been planned.

My dignity had been ground under their feet and turned into entertainment for everyone else.

I looked at him again.

“Don’t talk to me about the past.

Colin, I truly hate you.”

I left through the window without another glance.

He struggled up and reached after me.

“Paige, you’re leaving, aren’t you?

You’re… you’re not coming back?”

I didn’t answer.

I turned and went to the Bennett house.

Spencer was in the living room, drunk out of his mind.

“Paige…” He mumbled my name.

My chest tightened.

His eyes suddenly focused.

“Paige, you’re back. You’re back!

I-I’ll make up your bed–”

He staggered to his feet, arms reaching for me,

His arms closed on nothing.

“You…” His breath stopped.

“I’m already dead.”

I didn’t look at his face. “I only came to tell you I hate you.

And I will never forgive you. Never.”

Then I went to Garrett’s house.

He was holding the stuffed toy I’d given him as a child.

“Paige, I was wrong…”

I stopped beside him. “I still hate you.”

He froze, then pushed himself up against the wall.

“Paige, you’re back!”

“I’m not.”

Under his almost-bleeding gaze, I drifted away again.

“No-don’t-don’t leave me!”

Three days later Colin bought a burial plot and put me in the ground.

The second the dirt covered me, my body lightened. My spirit faded away.

Everyone understood.

The person they kept calling for would never appear again.

I walked toward the light.

To be reborn into another life.

All I wanted was another life–one without them.