This Is How I Disappear (Negan/OFC)

Chapter 54

———Negan's POV ———

Shit, I'm dreaming. And it's that same goddamn dream, again.

I'm standing outside my old house. But this time, I don't fuckin' go inside. I just stand on the sidewalk and look through the fuckin' window as my dream kids sit at the kitchen table with their homework.

"They're beautiful," Lucille's familiar voice says from my right in almost a whisper. I didn't even fuckin' know that she was there.

I hesitate to look down at her, in case she looks fuckin' sick, but she doesn't this time. She looks exactly the same way she did the last time I had this dream, alive and beautiful. "Yeah. They are." I clear my throat and hang my head in shame. "I'm fuckin' sorry... for forgetting about..."

She just shakes her head at me. "Don't be, Negan."

"You deserve-"

"-you drinking yourself to death because of me every year?" she finishes my sentence. But that's not what I was gonna fuckin' say.

"No. You just deserve... I don't fuckin' know. More. More than me just forgetting about you."

"Moving on doesn't mean forgetting." She grabs my hand and holds it softly in her own. "You need to move on, Negan."

I turn my head from Lucille back to the window and see Chuck walk up to the kids, leaning over them like she's helping them with their homework. And she's heavily fuckin' pregnant again. And she looks goddamn gorgeous.

"Do you know what she's dreaming about right now?" Lucille asks.

I look to her and shake my head.

"She's dreaming that she's all alone. And she's afraid."

"Shit. She's having a nightmare?" I turn to look through the window at her again. "I should fuckin' wake up." As soon as I say it, I realize that it's fuckin' crazy to think that dream Lucille somehow knows what's happening in real life, so I turn back to her. "You don't know what she's dreaming. You're not even fuckin' real."

Lucille shrugs a little and smirks in that way she always did when she knew she was right. "I'm real enough to know that it hurt her last night to think that a piece of your heart still belongs to me."

"I hurt her?" I scratch at the back of my neck at the fuckin' thought. "I love her more than fuckin' anything. I never want to hurt her."

"I know that. And I know, despite that, you're still afraid to let me go. I want to tell you that it's okay to. We had our time together, but I don't want the memory of me to cause a rift between the two of you." She moves to stand in front of me. "You started to move on the second you found her. That's why you forgot the anniversary. That's not bad thing," she stresses. "But you have to release your guilt to let go fully." She lays her hand on my cheek and I swear I can feel the warmth from it. Like she's really fuckin' here.

"You were so good to me and I was a piece of shit," I mutter almost to myself.

"You weren't, Negan. You made some bad choices. But we had good times. More good than bad."

"You were happy?" I ask, almost not wanting to hear the fucking answer.

"Of course I was happy. Were you?"

"Yeah."

She gives me a sad smile. "Do you remember the day that Chuck dropped off the pie to our house?"

I nod.

"I knew that day that she was meant for you."

"Lucille-"