The Promise She Broke

When Helena Ashbourne pushed the door open, she brought in the faint smell of tobacco.

Her eyes landed on the fresh bandage around my wrist, and her brow creased.

"Gabriel, I'm gone five minutes and you still find a way to make trouble for me."

She reached for the bandage as she spoke, every movement thick with impatient disgust.

I pulled my hand back on instinct and cradled it against my chest.

"Someone already bandaged it for me."

Helena's hand froze in midair, and the look she gave me slowly filled with exhaustion.

In the beginning, when I told her someone was protecting me, she only thought I was getting worse, and she'd hold me tight with red-rimmed eyes.

Now my endless suffering was just a weight she couldn't put down.

"There's nobody here. Gabriel, how much longer are you going to lie to me?"

She grabbed my wrist before I could answer.

My shaking didn't make her gentler. If anything, her grip tightened, like a punishment.

She peeled the bandage off my skin, tearing the scab away with it.

Cold sweat broke out all over me, but I still held the wound out toward her and forced the words out.

"I haven't lied to you since I was fifteen. You know that..."

Something in my broken expression seemed to remind her of something. Her eyes darted away, and she turned to go.

"What about you? Have you ever lied to me?"

I threw the question at her back, and my nose started to sting.

Helena went rigid where she stood.

She wouldn't turn around, and she didn't answer.

Helena at sixteen had never been any good at lying.

Helena at thirty let her silence answer for her.

A few seconds later, she snapped toward the hallway.

"Delia, take every knife in this house and destroy them!

"If I ever see one in Mr. Sloane's hand again, you can find another job."

Delia Polk came in with a mop, muttering under her breath as she gathered up the knives.

"When is this illness of his ever going to end? Poor Ms. Ashbourne, everything she's had to put up with."

Put up with?

I looked at the thin line of blood winding down my wrist and opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

Helena, you don't love me anymore.

So why won't you let me go? Why keep dragging this out until it kills us both?

I was still turning that over when her assistant, Damon Cross, walked into the house without even changing his shoes.

He behaved like he owned the place, reaching up to smooth the collar she'd pulled out of place.

Even with blood all over the floor, his expression stayed gentle and perfectly polite.

"Mr. Sloane, if you're lucid right now, let Ms. Ashbourne go. It hurts the rest of us just to watch her."

He pretended to step closer as he said it.

The faint tobacco smell Helena had carried in grew stronger, and my stomach turned over.

I doubled over and retched.

Half blind, I reached out and tried to catch the hem of Helena's pants.

My fingers had barely touched the fabric when Damon suddenly clutched his stomach and staggered.

Helena saw me moving toward her and shoved me away without thinking.

I landed hard on the floor. The wound on my wrist dragged across the rough carpet, and another wide smear of red bloomed under it.

"Is it your stomach again? I'll take you to the hospital."

The two of them left with their arms around each other.

Before the door closed, Helena glanced back at me.

The light was behind her, so I couldn't see her face, but I understood her eyes.

It was relief, the look of someone who'd finally set down a weight she'd been chained to for years.

Our love was over. Hers was only starting.

Maybe Delia was right. Maybe being with me really had been more than Helena could bear.

And as I thought it, the girl in the school uniform appeared in front of me again.

She looked at me, tears falling one after another. She wanted to touch me and didn't dare.

Her fingers trembled in the empty air.

"Gabriel, you're the best boy I've ever known. Leave her."

I lifted my hand and covered the girl's eyes without ever quite touching them.

My palm met nothing but a cool, empty chill.

"I'll go with you."

As the suffocation closed over me, I felt myself fall into somebody's arms.

Only there.

Only Helena at sixteen.

Only she would ever love me.