41 • Healing

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It hurts. The days dragged in a blur. Sleep, cry, repeat.

Oakley's funeral was hard but I needed to get it done because I knew he was waiting to be put at peace so he can be with his parents. I fell sick after that and spent the past week in bed, crying pathetically.

Gun points to Oakley. Trigger is pulled. His beautiful blue eyes. Oakley falls.

It all flashes in my mind as I stare up at the ceiling in the bathroom. It's like a movie projector showing the most gruesome, heartbreaking film of someone's life. My life.

"Oakley, you're going to be fine! You can't break RORA!"

My fingers graze the tattoo of an oak plant on my wrist. That's my semi-colon. But my semi-colon is gone now. He's dead.

"No, no, no. Don't leave me. Please, don't leave me. You can't leave."

I still remember the day we made RORA. We were 12, and it was a couple months after I had met him. It was the first time my dad hit me. Punched me right in the stomach, while I was on my period too. Oakley noticed I was quiet and I cried into his shoulder, telling him everything and begging him not to leave me alone in all this. From that day on, RORA was formed.

"You're going to be okay, Rose. Let me go."

And 11 years after that, RORA died with him. Because you can't have it if half of it is gone.

His eyes shut. I scream. I sob.

I sink further into the hot bath, praying that the steaming water eases the ache of my soul. The part of it that was torn off the night Oakley died.

He takes his last breath. I scream. I sob.

After Samuel shot him, I looked into his eyes.

A montage, of the million times I'd done that, flickered through my troubled mind. It was our first kiss. It was our first argument. It was our first time. It was his sarcastic remarks about my trauma. His hands held flowers. Then it was our breakup.

I thought, stupidly, that maybe I'd see some regret, remorse, guilt, anything for the innocent man he just killed. But all I saw was a killer.

So, I grabbed Marco's gun and shot all six bullets right into Samuel's cold, dead heart.

And I didn't regret it one bit.

I didn't realise what I did at first, it was only after Luca brought me home and it was the dead of the night that I realised, I killed Samuel.

The bathroom door opens again and I keep my eyes shut, already knowing that it's Maya. She's been checking on me every 10 minutes and I have a feeling Luca put her up to it to make sure I'm not lying in this bath dead.

He's been too worried about me.

He takes care of me all day, he feeds me himself, he braids my hair. The night Oakley died, I couldn't wash his blood off my hands and Luca did it for me.

Today, he had something to take care of. His phone kept ringing and he ignored it but I told him that he can go and that I didn't want to be babied. He must've read into that because he hesitantly left.

We've been sleeping in the same bed, seeing as we're officially a couple, and I've had nightmares only to be woken up wrapped in his strong arms. I love him even more for it.

Luca is everything that I could've asked for in a man and I can't believe that he's all mine.

"Don't worry, Maya. I'm not dead," I keep my eyes closed as her shadow falls over me, too relaxed by the hot, bubbly ripples of water to open them.

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