PULSE [H.S]

085

"Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different." — Oprah Winfrey

Nobody is coming to free me.

I'm stuck in this apartment with the last person on Earth that I want to be talking to. If I had to envision what my own personal hell would look like, it would be this.

I collapse back onto the couch when I start to accept that Niall and Clove aren't planning on coming back anytime soon. So, I will wait this out until they return.

I lean back on the couch, shutting my eyes. I drown out the world around me, focusing on what the backs of my eyelids look like. This will pass. That door will open eventually, and I'll be free.

Niall is a little shit, and I feel really angry towards him. It was not long ago that we had a conversation about how I needed him to stop lying to me. And yet here I am, trapped with Harry because of his and Clove's lies.

"Kiz," Harry says again.

His voice breaks through my silence. The sound of his thick, raspy voice disrupts the inner peace I was trying so hard to find. I hate the way he says my name.

I ignore him.

To pass time, I start counting sheep in my head.

One sheep. Two sheep. Three sheep..... Eighty-eight sheep.

"Kiz."

One sheep. Two sheep..... Sixty-seven sheep.

"Kizalyn."

One sheep. Two sheep. Three-

"Kiz, come on."

One sheep-

His hand touches my shoulder, and my eyes fly open immediately at the contact. I jerk away from him, my eyes wide and my body filled with panic. He pulls his arm away, holding his hands up in front of him. My reaction to his touch startles both of us.

He says, "Talk to me. Please."

"I'd really prefer not to," I reply.

"What do you want me to say?"

I say, "That you're sorry for leaving me. That you're sorry for how much pain that caused me. That you fucked up. Literally anything that takes accountability."

He says, "I said I was sorry—"

"No," I interrupt him before he spews the same bullshit at me again. I say, "You're sorry for everything that happened before you left. You're sorry I got pulled into a drug cartel, that I was beat by my ex, that I was forced to kill people, and that someone hurt me because I was with you. I don't give a shit about any of that."

He tries to speak, but I don't let him.

I say, "None of that hurt me. None of that fucking hurt me, and you keep saying you left because you didn't want me to keep getting hurt. That shit didn't hurt me. I need you to get it through your thick fucking skull that the only thing that hurt me was you leaving. You leaving me is what hurt me."

I go on, "To protect me from getting hurt, you hurt me in the worst way you possibly could. I don't want to hear apologies about anything that happened before. I don't give a flying fuck about any of it. I care about the fact that you left me, even when I begged you not to."

"Don't you see what happens when you are with me?" he says, his voice cracking. I can see the emotion on his face, and I can hear it in his voice. He says, "You get jumped, beaten, drugged. How am I supposed to go on and let that keep happening?"