Nothing Left to Lose (78 page)

Within ten
minutes, my muscles were screaming at me to stop, my breath was
coming out in pants and sweat ran down my neck and back. I knew
that Ashton didn’t like me to run like this… but Ashton wasn’t here
right now, and I didn’t want to keep thinking about Jack and how he
should have been twenty today. I didn’t want to think about how he
should be half way into his medical degree, or how he probably
would have joined the college football team. I didn’t want to think
about the fact that he was gone and that it was entirely my fault.
I sped up a little on the treadmill, running as fast as I could to
block out the grief and the thoughts that were trying to pull me
under, but this time I was unable to outrun my problems.

When my knees
wobbled and I almost fell, I knew it was time to give up. As I
slowed down to a walk, I gasped for breath, pulling at the neck of
my T-shirt because it felt tight all of a sudden. Once the
treadmill came to a standstill, my legs gave way and I slumped to
my knees heavily. Instantly, my whole body hurt and my leg muscles
cramped and seized. Pressing my forehead to the floor, I gritted my
teeth against the pain, gripping my thighs as tears slid down my
face and fell onto the floor.

“Shit,” I
hissed.

“You okay, Baby
Girl?” Ashton asked suddenly, reaching out to rub my back and
legs.

I jumped and
let out a little squeal because I hadn’t realised that he was in
the room. “Shit, it hurts so much!” I hissed through my teeth,
unable to move from the little ball on the floor that I’d curled
into. He sighed and continued to massage my thighs. After a few
minutes, I twisted my head to the side to look at him. The sad and
disappointed look on his face made my heart sink and guilt twist in
my gut. The disappointed look on his face was so much worse than
the disapproving scowl that usually followed one of my intense
sessions. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” I apologised. I hadn’t
walked into the gym planning on running like that, I’d just needed
a distraction and my old habits and coping methods had taken
over.

Ashton nodded
sadly. “I know. It’s okay; I know why you did it.”

“Please don’t
look at me like that, I can’t stand it,” I begged, feeling my chin
tremble as I looked away from him. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. He let
out another heavy sigh as he tugged on my hand and tried to pull me
into his lap. I shook my head in protest. “I can’t I’m all
sweaty.”

He laughed
incredulously as a playful smirk slipped onto his face. “I like you
sweaty,” he replied, tugging on my arm again. “Just do as you’re
told for once and come here.”

I sniffed,
swiping at the tears that were now falling down my face and
complied with his request, manoeuvring myself into his lap and
setting my head on his chest as his arms engulfed me. His hands
resumed massaging my thighs softly.

“Are you okay?
You want me to run you a bath or something?” he offered.

I lifted my
head, looking into his caring eyes. “Why are you not shouting at me
for doing that?”

He sighed, his
forehead lined with a frown. “Anna, I understand why you do it. You
haven’t done it for so long so something must really be bothering
you.”

I closed my
eyes, not being able to look at his face anymore. “I was just
thinking about Jack’s birthday. He would have been twenty today.”
He pulled me closer to his chest, wiping the sweat from my
forehead, but not saying anything. When I opened my eyes, I saw
that same disappointed expression on his face. My chin trembled,
and I silently wished he’d just shout at me, it would be easier.
“Please don’t keep looking at me like that. I’m sorry, I won’t do
it again,” I promised, feeling the tears welling up in my eyes.

“Looking at you
like what?” he asked, confused.

I shook my
head. “Like you’re disappointed. It’s not nice to see, I can’t
stand it.”

“I am
disappointed, Anna,” he replied, closing his eyes and shaking his
head.

A lump formed
in my throat at his admission. “I know, I’m sorry.” I turned my
face into his T-shirt, trying to block out the sight of his
face.

“I’m not
disappointed in you, Baby Girl. I’m disappointed in myself,” he
said sadly.

I snapped my
head up to look at him.
Disappointed in himself? What on earth
does that mean?
“What? Why?”

He sighed and
ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up on end. “I try to
make you happy, I try to help you, I try to stop you hurting so
badly that the only release is for you to kill yourself through
exercise. I try, but I’m just not good enough,” he stated, looking
at me apologetically.

Disbelief
almost made me gawk at him. He honestly thought he wasn’t good
enough to stop me hurting? I sat up, shocked, and looked at him in
disbelief. How could this boy, who had saved my life and made me
live again, possibly think that he wasn’t good enough?

“Ashton,
seriously, what the hell are you talking about? Not good enough?
Are you crazy? If it wasn’t for you, I would be hiding in one of
the bedrooms in the White House, expelled from yet another school,
screaming myself awake every night, afraid to let anyone near me,
wearing baggy clothes, and drawing pictures which, quite frankly,
scare the shit out of me. I didn’t have a life before you, I had an
existence, and I didn’t even want that,” I admitted, blurting out
more of my feelings than I had ever done before.

His hand closed
over mine as I unconsciously started pinching the skin on the
inside of my elbow. “But you still won’t talk to me, Anna. You’d
still rather come down here and make your whole body hurt, rather
than talking through your feelings with me,” he explained, rubbing
his thumb over the back of my hand.

“I don’t want
to scare you away,” I admitted, looking away from him.

“You won’t
scare me away. Please talk to me. Nothing you could do or say would
make me leave you,” he vowed, putting a finger under my chin and
making me look at him.

I gulped.
Does that mean forever, or for the next three months?
We
just sat there looking at each other for a couple of minutes. His
eyes were narrowed in a silent plea for me to open up to him, to
finally let him in once and for all. The trouble was I didn’t want
to do that. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, it was more that I
knew that if he knew even half of the stuff that went through my
head, he’d finally know how fucked up I was and he’d run for the
hills. But the soft, tender, pleading look to his eyes told me that
he wasn’t ever going to think badly of me, or judge me, or think I
was a bitch or coward.

I sighed and
decided to take a chance for once in my life. Ashton was worth
taking a chance on. “What do you want to know?”

His shoulders
seemed to relax as a dazzling smile crept onto his face. For some
reason, he looked extremely proud of me. “What college were you and
Jack planning on going to?” he asked.

I smiled. That
one was easy. “We wanted different ones. He wanted to be a doctor,
so he wanted Harvard, and I wanted MSU,” I answered, shrugging.

His eyes
widened with apparent surprise. “You would have gone to separate
schools?”

I smiled sadly.
“Yeah, we were very confident that nothing could break us up.
Neither of us saw Carter coming,” I said grimly.

His expression
hardened in an instant. “You were with Carter for ten months?” The
way he said Carter’s name was almost a growl.

“Yeah, just
over. I banged my head and passed out at the club, and woke up in
his house in Miami,” I replied, frowning, trying not to think about
it too much.

His hand slid
to my elbow. “This self-harming thing that you do, I’ve read about
it. People that self-harm sometimes feel that they lack control in
their lives. Is that why you hurt yourself?”

I blew out a
big breath and turned my arm over, seeing the numerous little white
scars that lined the inside of my forearm and the red patch at my
elbow where I was pinching myself earlier. “Kind of. I don’t
actually know why I do it. It’s like an outlet for pain sometimes
is the only way I can describe it to you. Sometimes I get so
overwhelmed that I can’t cope and doing that can sometimes help me
focus or can clear my mind. I don’t know why I do it. I don’t do it
often anymore,” I answered. That was the truth. I’d only done it a
few times since Ashton had been with me.

Ashton was
watching me, absorbing everything I was saying with a thoughtful
look on his face. “I don’t like you hurting yourself.”

I swallowed
noisily. “I know.”

“I can be your
outlet. If you just talk to me, maybe I can help you clear your
mind from now on,” he suggested hopefully. Unable to answer, I set
my head on his shoulder and nodded. I knew there would always be
times in my life that I would do it, I couldn’t promise it would
never happen again, but I would try

His hand slid
down my arm, over the bumpy scars that had gone white over time and
settled on my wrist as his thumb traced the biggest, jagged scar
across my wrist. “You tried to kill yourself the first time by
slitting your wrists.” It wasn’t actually a question and I realised
that he was prompting me to talk about the more difficult things
that had happened.

I didn’t raise
my head from his shoulder as I answered. “Actually, that was the
second time. I tried to jump from the balcony at the club when they
threw Jack off, but Carter stopped me. He said it was a waste,” I
admitted, swallowing the lump in my throat. That was the first time
I had told anyone that, ever.

His angry
silence filled the room for a few seconds before he spoke again.
“You tried to kill yourself two other times, on your birthday.”

I nodded.
“Yeah, I took some pills.”
Please don’t leave me after this,
Ashton!

He took a deep
breath, seeming to choose his next words carefully. “You actually
wanted to die? You told me when I first started that you had
nothing left to lose and that you wanted to die because you had
nothing to live for,” he winced, as if the memory hurt him.

I nodded.
“Yeah, I wanted to die. I remember waking up after each time I’d
tried to kill myself and feeling so disappointed that I was alive.
I thought I was being punished for what I did to Jack,” I
admitted.

He gasped.
“Punished? You thought living was punishment?”

“I guess.” I
shrugged. “Every time I tried to kill myself it never worked, I
thought that someone wanted me to suffer, to feel the pain every
day. Death would have been easier than going through that. The
pain, the grief, it killed me inside,” I explained.

He held my hand
tightly in his. His eyes were concerned as he tilted his head so I
had to look at him. “Your birthday’s coming up,” he whispered.

I nodded and
smiled reassuringly. “I won’t do it again, I promise.” I didn’t
want to die anymore. I wanted to live my life. I wanted the day
when Ashton would want to settle down and have a girlfriend; I
wanted the one day that he might look at me and fall in love with
me.

“You won’t?”
His voice was pleading and hopeful.

I smiled. “No,
Ashton, I won’t,” I confirmed, looking into his beautiful green
eyes. His whole face relaxed as relief washed over it, he blew out
a sharp breath as if he had been holding it a long time.

“Why not?”

Because I’m in
love with you. Because I love my life with you in it. Because a
world where someone as special as you lives, can’t be the horrible
place I once thought it was.

All of those
answers ran through my head at the same time. But what I actually
said was, “Because you gave me my life back.”

His lips parted
as a muscle in his eye twitched. I pushed myself up from the floor.
He didn’t move.

I held down a
hand to him. “Come on, Pretty Boy; let’s go get some food, all that
exercise has made me hungry,” I laughed uncomfortably. I’d never
openly had a conversation with anyone like that before, my
therapist had always tried to get me to talk, but I either made
bitchy comments or lied.

“Why did you
tell me all of that?”

I looked up at
his stunned face and shrugged. “Because I trust you, and I could
see it was important to you that I opened up.”

He stood up and
a grin stretched across his face. I knew there and then that he
wasn’t running anywhere, not yet, at least. “Thank you,” he rasped,
his voice thick with emotion.

“No. Thank
you,” I whispered gratefully.

A couple of
hours later, our hire car rolled into the cemetery parking lot.
Ashton’s hand was tight in mine as we walked through the graveyard.
As per my usual routine, I stooped and picked up any dandelions
that I came across on the way. About ten feet away from his grave,
I stopped and looked at Ashton. “Do you think maybe I could be on
my own for a bit? I promise I won’t go anywhere.”

He sighed
deeply, shaking his head. “Anna, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

I stepped up
and put my arms around his waist, setting my head on his shoulder.
“Please?”

“Anna, I
can’t,” he whined.

“Please,
Ashton?” I begged, trying not to cry. I needed to talk to Jack
about everything that had happened and beg for his forgiveness. I
couldn’t do that with Ashton watching over me and listening.

His arms
tightened around me as he groaned in defeat. “I can move a bit
further away, I guess,” he conceded, pulling back and looking down
at me with a suddenly stern expression. “You do not move from this
spot. I’ll still be able to see you, if anyone approaches you,
anyone
, you get up and you run as fast as you can to my
side, understand?” A muscle in his jaw clenched as his eyes
narrowed in warning. From his expression, I could see it was
hurting him to do this.