The mornings were the worst.
She never knew if she'd wake alone or to a warm bed, though she wasn't sure which was better.
Lonely mornings were empty and the cold seeped into her bones like disease. Mornings with him there were too quiet, too forced. The air sat between them, filled with half hopes belated apologies floating like bombs waiting to be spoken.
X
He whispered promises into her neck like the kisses he never gave.
And she knew. She knew he'd never love her and always the other. She knew she'd always love him and never another.
(Though there were the days her own memories got to her and she didn't love anyone, least of all herself.)
His lips murmured words too low for her ears to catch, but she knew because of the air playing on her skin, his lips brushing ever so light, and all the predawn mornings waking the exact same way. It was usually during the night that he'd slip into her house to curl about her after she had turned the lights off and went to bed. He saw better than she did, so night wasn't quite the same for them, but she thought the shadows on her form made it easier for him to pretend she was who she was not, dark clothing her in fantasy and over worn scraps of memories.
Or it was shame.
Or guilt.
He knew she loved him just as well as she knew he couldn't reciprocate. Maybe he didn't mean for her to see the looks, filled with regret and maybe if's. Maybe it hurt too much to see her face as he used her as a replacement, but it would hurt more to stay away.
He was always so caring, so giving and selfless. So kind. He had been the one to pick up her jagged shards and piece them together, giving her light and purpose once more.
(And then they were happy together until that screech of rubber took his heart. It turns out 'ever after' doesn't come to people like them.)
During the days, he ran himself ragged on the menial tasks, the insignificant and she wondered if he remembered what it meant to feel the sun.
So the mornings she woke with words on her neck, her heart ached, but her body stayed. If she couldn't fix him, the least she could do was lay there and mourn for him, with him.
X
Because at the end of the day, after she had cried and lost and grown, all she wanted was to be needed, to be safe with a place to call home. It was pointless to run, her mortal legs were too slow and half the demons were of her own heart. So she hid in his.
He no longer wanted her, but he needed her and that was enough. He did not love her as he once had but as a girl she had had her share of love and romance and fairytales.
The truth was that love had no roots, romance was a passing fancy that, if you were lucky, dulled into the monotony of the known and assumed. People were not fated, pulled together by red strings. Life was bumper cars, random and chaotic, made of intense interactions that last a split second. The whirlwind affair of her youth was lovely for as long as it lasted and now she was lucky to have the monotonous, the safe and stable.
She held the man who did not love her but stayed, struggling to forget the one who loved her and fled. His heart beat beneath her ear, steady, steady, strong. She buried herself in the rhythm and imagined that strength as her own.
X
The day he stopped loving her they drove to Port Angeles for a date. He was young and playful; she was sad and healing. They were both trying to make her heart his. They were smiling, hopeful.
The city was partly cloudy, a light rain that was nothing more than mist dancing with tiny rainbows across the sky. As they made their way across the street, she thought that the drizzle made everything just a bit brighter, shiny like the world was a new dryer just waiting to be discovered.
A foot from the sidewalk he froze.
What is it? she asked.
His face was horror and wonder and anger and bliss.
A squeal behind them was followed by a thick thud. He spun and she mirrored, expecting the worst. It was worse.
A black ford was stopped in the middle of the road with a balding driver that was scrambling and sweating. The man beside her had his eyes locked on the form sprawled out in front of the car, laying helpless in the midst of a storm of notes and textbooks.
She knew.
He was locked in place, muscles rigid and eyes unblinking. She moved for him, rushing to the girl. Fingers on a still neck found nothing. Bent over, an ear to chest heard nothing. A half sob crawled up her throat, for the body under her that would only grow cold, for the man who had lost everything, for herself who had lost him.
She wondered what it meant to have a dead meaning of your life. His hollow eyes answered her, looking for all the world like the girl had taken everything inside of him with her. A lead weight dropped in her heart as his caved in. She felt all the little edges of her self unravel all over as she watched him shatter.
I love you, she said. But of course, she was too late.