My Rescue Was Their Reunion, My Hell Was Their Project Chapter 09

My Rescue Was Their Reunion, My Hell Was Their Project Chapter 09

Arthur was on his knees beside my body, his forehead pressed against my hand. My hand was already cold. 

“Elena, I’m sorry…” 

“You told me you had cancer. I didn’t believe you. You told me they tortured you for three years. I didn’t believe you. You told me Chloe sent those men. I didn’t believe that either.” 

His voice broke apart. 

“Every time you asked for help, I thought you were acting. Every time you tried to explain, I thought you were lying.” 

He gripped my hand with both of his, shaking so hard the bed frame rattled. 

“But I didn’t know I swear I didn’t know Chloe changed the reports. I didn’t know what they were actually doing to you…” 

The rest fell apart into something that wasn’t quite crying lower, uglier, more animal than human. 

Julian stood at the window. The same window. The same eighteen–story drop. 

“She said she’d come to the wedding.” His voice barely carried across the room. “I thought she’d given in. Accepted the wedding. But she wasn’t giving in.” 

He stared at the pavement below. 

“She came to say goodbye. She turned herself into the 

ultimate wedding gift – threw herself onto my wedding car so I’d never forget.” 

Julian started to laugh. Tears came with it, and he couldn’t 

stop either. 

“I was marrying someone else, and she still came for me. I destroyed her, and she still came for me.” 

Nolan hadn’t said a word. 

He sat in the corner with a notebook – yellowed and worn. Mine. Left behind before Ravens Hollow. 

He opened the first page. My handwriting, small and careful. 

[Nolan said he didn’t want to be alive again today. I made him chicken soup and told him he was the bravest person I’d ever met. I know he doesn’t believe it. But I do. One day, he’s going to become someone incredible.] 

He turned the page. 

[Julian’s stress ulcers were flaring up again. I slipped his medicine into his briefcase. I hope he found it before the pain got bad.] 

The next. 

[Arthur worked past midnight again. I left a fresh thermos of black coffee on his desk. He never noticed it was me – he thinks the housekeeper did it.] 

The next. 

[I think maybe if they don’t need me anymore, I should go somewhere far away. That way I wouldn’t be in anyone’s way.] 

The notebook slipped from his hands. He folded in on himself, 

right there on the floor, and the sound that came out of him 

was barely human. 

“Elena!” He was gasping between sobs. “I didn’t deserve you 

I never deserved anything you gave me 

“I’m a monster.” 

He slammed his fists into the floorboards. Bone to wood, full force, again and again, until his knuckles split open and blood pooled beneath his hands. The doctors rushed in to restrain him, but he threw them off and tore at his own hair and chest, gasping for air that wouldn’t come. 

“Elena, I’m sorry – please come back – please –” 

“I’m not asking you to forgive me. Just come back. I’ll do anything.” 

But I was already dead. 

My body lay in front of him. Cold. Still. It would never answer 

him again.