The Pain That Grows Us

Chapter Twenty

The desk is cold under my hands, and the chair is not as comfortable as I imagined it would be. I don't know how Jason manages to sit here for hours on end. I don't know why I am here. I should just text my brother and tell him to come get me, but I don't think that would end very fucking well.

"Need some paper?" Jason asks, turning the page in the book he is reading.

"Yeah, it might be helpful." I ground out, turning to see him lounging on his bed with a smirk on his face.

"What did Talia say to you?" he looks up at me over his book.

"You don't need to know."

"Right." he says, getting up. "Next time, it's in this drawer, and it looks like you have a pen already." he tells me, eyeballing the pink sparkly pen in my hand.

Fucking pen. I wish she didn't take all her notes in fucking pink. Why couldn't it have been an electric blue or something? Or purple? Purple is fucking nice. I should have stolen her fucking purple pen, she stole mine after all.

"Fuck off, Jason."

"Hey, no judgment here." he raises his hands, backing away slowly. "Okay, maybe just a little bit..." he laughs, crashing into his bed.

"Just fuck off." I hunch over the blank paper in front of me.

No girl wants to hear that.

Fuck. What has this place done to me? Who am I? I am fucking Jack Hathoway. I can't forget that. If no one wants to tell me where she is that's fucking fine. If she is dead, I guess that is fine too. I will have to live with it. But I refuse to believe that she is dead. I refuse to believe I am still here alive when she isn't.

Ruby,

You deserve better than me. But I can't fucking let you go. You deserve more than a guy who walks away when things get hard. You deserve someone and who is going to love you through the good times and the bad. I can't promise you that there will be many good days if any when it comes to loving me. But I can promise you this. You will never have to want for anything, you will be safe.

I could write you a million letters until my hand cramps and I am blue in the fucking face. But I don't need a million letters. I just need the one, because that's what was asked for. So here it is. A little late, but it's better than fucking never. Fuck. I have never been one to follow the rules and you know that.

I said some pretty fucking messed up things the other night. I will keep apologizing for that, because I know I was wrong. But I want you to know that I never meant any of those things. That I mean this. That what I have to say right now is the truth, that I will never regret what I have to say right now.

I have loved you since we were in the third grade, before I even knew what love was. I loved the pink bow in your hair, the way you would write your name on everything as if you couldn't get enough of it. I loved you when you wouldn't look at me unless it was to glare, as if you knew how much I just wanted you to look at me.

I loved you even more when you stepped in front of Danny on the playground in fifth grade. You were so mad your face was red, but there you were standing in between Danny and I telling me that if I wanted to mess with him I was going to have to go through you.

Then one day out of the blue you walked up to me. You made sure no one was around when you handed me five dollars. You told me that it was for my lunch, because you realized I never ate. Hell, I wanted to kiss you. I wouldn't have been any good at it. But I wanted to.

You invited me over that same week. You let me shower and wash my clothes, you made sure to feed me too. You saw me when the rest of the world was too scared to. I helped you with your math homework that afternoon, I gave you some lame excuse I can't remember now. But I remember not wanting to leave, because you were finally looking at me with your big bright blue eyes.