Lost in Hollywood

Hell Hole

"I'm sorry for everything.

The things I said to you that night were all lies. I said them just to make you leave and because I'm an asshole. I'm so sorry.

I know I'm a fucking idiot. You deserved better.

I just wish that I could take it all back. I miss you like Hell.

When you get better and get to go home, can we please talk? I love you. I never stopped loving you."

Immediately after reading the letter, Sky wished she hadn't. She hoped she could turn back the time and tell Ruth that no, she didn't need it, that it was just some old thing that didn't matter anymore, and then Ruth would have thrown the damn thing into the trash and Sky never would have read it, and she wouldn't be sitting here now, tears running down her cheeks, feeling Hawk's words in her body as if they were carved into her skin with a burning iron instead of being just ink on the paper.

I'm so sorry.

I miss you like Hell.

I love you. I never stopped loving you.

Sky stared at the words, tears blurring her vision, taking her breath away.

All the ways Hawk had broken her heart, kept flashing through her mind, each and every one just as painful as when it had just happened. The stealing of the medal of honor and lying about it. Destroying her science project. Breaking Demetri's arm. Spreading those mean rumors about her, talking about their intimate moments to his idiot friends. Yelling at her on the front steps of his house that night— It was always about you, about your fucking issues, about how hard everything was for you. Like you're the only one who's suffered! You were never there for me! — I had to let you win at the All Valley because you were so fucking messed up! I was so sick of your stupid, neverending drama! – Why would anybody be with you? To get some pussy.

That night she had gone to Cody for the first time, had started emptying the pill bottle in her car in Cody's driveway, fully intending to kill herself. Her heart had been broken, shattered, destroyed, and— it had been Cody who had saved her life by interfering, by carrying her into his bed as if she was worthy of such kindness, as if her stupid life was worth saving.

Sky wished she had never read this letter, that made her question everything that had happened since that night.

I'm so sorry. I just wish that I could take it all back.

Sure, Hawk had apologized to her before - had tried to apologize that day at the dojo when Sky had started crying and screaming at his face, and later, when she had gone to see him to form some kind of a truce— they had sat side by side on his front steps and again he had said the same things that were in this letter. That he was sorry. That he knew he had been a complete asshole. That none of the things he had yelled at her that night had been true, that they were all lies, lies, lies - just lies that he had made up to hurt her in the worst possible way, so why did it matter now to read the same apologies on the paper, why did it make her heart hurt like it was carved out of her chest, why was she thinking for the first time ever that maybe I should forgive him for what he did?

Sky tossed away the letter and the envelope, threw them away from the bed to the floor, and lay down, burying her face in the pillow. Her tears wouldn't stop flowing, they soaked the pillowcase, they made her breathing come in painful, ragged sobs.

I love you. I never stopped loving you.

You didn't lose me. I'm here. I'm still here and I still—

What had he been about to say yesterday, when he had been helping her to clean the house and his sentence had been cut in half as Dad had walked in?

That he still loved her?