Eternity's Ending (our version of events) - Book One

Xander

Now I remember. For the past five days, I've done nothing but remember. I remember the lifetime I left behind with a single gunshot. Never in a million years did I think I would be forced to relive those moments. Never in a million years did I account for the possibility of a familiar tune dragging the waters of my past, forcing the depths to give up their dead. Time didn't touch those wounds and every moment spent breathing since the truth was drudged up was also spent watching my world crumble to shit in the palm of my hands. I considered a last stand; one final attempt to work things out but the fire burning within me was not refining my love for Vincent, it was destroying it.

I haven't been able to look at Vincent because the flawlessness I once saw has been replaced with the image of the decomposing corpse his song resurfaced. I don't know how to be with him because I can't decide what to do. I want to love him because it's all my heart was built to do. But I also want to slit his throat for being weak enough to abandon our life and making me weak enough to abandon mine. What if history repeats itself? Vincent's at a complete loss as to how to fix me. I'm pretty sure I'm beyond repair. I just haven't said that to him because I don't want them to be true.

"Xander?" Vincent peeks his head into the doorway of the bedroom.

I close my eyes and hold my breath. I hear the door creak open a few inches wider and clench my fist to stop the trembling that now accompanies any interaction with him. He crosses the room to the foot of the bed and places a hand gently on my toes.

"Xander," he whispers now.

Everything he says to me when he thinks I'm sleeping comes in the form of a whisper. It's as if anything spoken at a normal volume might throw me into another nightmare. He shakes my foot before whispering my name again. I sit up at the sound of my name but I don't say anything to him. A million words are flooding my mouth but I don't want to release any of them out into the world until I know what it is he plans to say to me. I know he must know. He can't still be chalking my behavior up to a bad day or PMS. He has to know the problem lies with us. The problem...lies, with us. Lies we've been telling ourselves and each other because neither one of us believes our relationship or our partner is strong enough to handle the truth.

"We're not okay. But I don't know why" he's looking for my eyes in the moonlight.

"But you should know why."

"I don't know...how would I know?" he runs his hands across his forehead in frustration, "Whatever it is, it seems like you want to keep it a secret from me."

Vincent had no way of knowing the word secret would flip the kill switch in me.

"You want to talk secrets, Vincent?" I hurl a pillow at his head and become enraged when he catches it and sets it calmly to the side.

"You..." I emphasize the word, "want to fucking talk to me about keeping secrets when all you've ever done is lie to me, you fucking coward!"

I rip the covers from my legs and spring to my feet. I watch it register with him that I know what he's been hiding. I can't limit the devastation that comes with being right about this, being right about him.

"You let me find out in a dream!"

"You didn't want to know," he argues weakly.

"You didn't want me to know!" clenched fists no longer ward off the trembling.

My words are shaky because they buckle under the weight of tears threatening to drown them. "You didn't give me the option. You stole my choice. You even let me believe I was the problem, that I did something wrong. But it was you. You were weak and you made me weak like you."

"You have no idea what my life was like! You have no idea what I went through, what it took to love you for as long as I did. The beatings I took because I loved you. The beatings I took to save your life! I wasn't weak. I was strong for you, for us and if you were weak it's because you were weak. I didn't hold a gun to your head or pull the trigger. You made that decision."

"You were weak. You left me because you were too weak to stay. You didn't love me when it was hard and you don't get to love me now that it's easy," I spit the words at him with all the venom I can muster.

"Do you think it's easy to love you? You've fought me every step of the way in this relationship. Loving you then was a breeze compared to loving you now."

"Well let me save you the trouble of having to continue this hardship. You don't have to fucking love me, Vincent. I was fine before you and I know now I'll be so much better off without you."

"Shut up!" Vincent rises to his feet.

He stands toe to toe with me, his breath labored with fury. His hands outline my face in a way that tells me they would love to be doing far more damage than that.

"You've said all you get to say. I've never in my life swallowed as much pride as I have in pursuing you," his fists are balled into knots and the veins in his arms are pulsing with emotion.

"I swallow my pride because I'd do absolutely anything to make amends for the hurt I've caused you. I'm sorry, Xander. Maybe that's something I should have said at the outset of this relationship. I'm sorry for our past, for what I did to you. All I've ever wanted to do was love you the way I should have back then. Just let me, okay?"

"You don't want to love me. You want to love him and I'm not him," there it was, the truth I feared most.

I loved Vincent, love Vincent; not out of obligation or atonement for some sin I've committed but because I love him. I love everything about him and he let me believe the same was true of him; only it wasn't. He loved me for a million reasons that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with clearing his conscious. I don't even give him the chance to deny my allegations. If he doesn't that makes it absolutely true and that's more than I can handle at this point.

"I won't let you clear your conscience at my heart's expense, Vincent. Go find another source of forgiveness."