The Books I'll Never Write

An Innumerable Amount of Pieces

Tears flooded her fractured gaze. 

"When I met you I was done, I was committed, and I never had to worry for a minute about who I wanted to be with, who I wanted to stand by me for the rest of my life. Do you know what that level of betrayal feels like? Can you find a place in your small, shriveled heart to imagine what that was like for me?" She was forced to stop and turn away as sobs started to rack her body. 

After last year he thought his heart was too broken to be put back together, but in this moment he felt it shatter even more. Her shoulders were shaking, in terrible, whole being cries. As much as he wanted to reach out and help her, he knew nothing he did would help. 

Logic be damned, that wasn't going to stop him from trying. His hand reached out to lightly circle her wrist. "Princess, please..."

She turned sharply to face him as she flicked him off. "What? What do you want from me? Do you even know? Did you ever know? Cause I sure as hell didn't then, and I still don't now." She started to back away, composure completely gone. 

"You've made it impossible for me to know - to trust - to ever love you again. All I wanted was you, and now you're the one thing I. can't. have." The tears that had been welling up in her eyes started to pour over, streaming down an anguished face.   

He froze. She had loved him? He felt himself stop breathing, too stunned to process as she continued.

"I never needed you," she gasped, "but I wanted you more than you'll ever have the privilege of knowing. Loving you was easier than breathing, it was a dream that made me never want to open my eyes." 

This was a pain he had hoped to never know. It was as if someone had taken an ice cold poker to his heart as she continued, tears welling up in his own eyes now. 

"But when I did, when I opened my eyes and chose to accept you as part of my reality, you left. And now I will never let you forget it." She pivoted and fled down the hall, as if she was fast enough to outrun the ghosts of her past.

He came out of his shock as he watched her quickly leave him behind. He started frantically chasing after her, his voice echoing in the hall. "Princess, please! God, if you would just listen to me I-"

"NO" she stopped abruptly and sobbed, "Don't you get it? There is no listening because there is no explanation you could possibly give. I was willing to risk it all to have you and then you risked it all to leave. You broke me, shattered me into an innumerable amount of pieces and now-" she was gasping for air in between shaky, sobbing words, "Now that I'm finally able to pick those pieces out of the corners they flew into and put myself together, I can't let you back behind all those walls you once knocked down. I can't, and I'm not sorry."

Both now had tears streaming down their cheeks as they gazed at each other, wondering how a couple feet between them could feel like miles apart. "If you know what's good for you," she whispered, "Or if you care about what's good for me, you won't ever speak to me again."

He opened his mouth to explain, to apologize, to beg for a moment more in her presence, but nothing came out. He would regret it for the rest of his life.

So she took one last heaving breath, collected herself, and turned her back on the past that she deeply regretted, and the future she could never have.