The Right Moves (The Game #3)(41)
Author: Emma Hart

I shake my head because I can’t. I won’t. I don’t want to fall anywhere. At all. Because falling means hitting the bottom, and hitting the bottom means pain. Hurt. Anguish.

And I have enough of that.

“I’m not strong, Blake. Not really. I still feel everything and I still think the bad things. I still want to give in. Depression… it’s like drowning, like being pulled to the bottom of the ocean, except everyone around you is swimming and breathing on the surface. It’s like being in a crowd of people where you’re screaming and no one can hear you. It’s everything nightmares are made of.”

“Then let me be the one to teach you swim again,” he whispers, moving his face to mine. “Let me hear you and let me be the one to remind you how to live.”

A shudder wracks my body, and I feel the tightening of my chest that always precedes the suffocation of the darkness. I release his shirt and wrap my arms around his neck, burying my face into his skin. Blake’s arms go round my body in one smooth movement, holding me tightly against him, and he moves us so his back is against the wall and I’m sitting on him.

I still feel it. I want to feel the sting. I want the sharpness of the blade against my flesh. I want the release it gives me. Until Blake presses his lips to my temple and my heart thuds once. Loudly. Reminding me I’m still alive.

And all there is, is Blake. The feel of his arms around mine. My skin against his. His breath against my ear. The tightness of his hold, so tight it rivals the tightness of the hold my depression has on me.

The sudden clarifying reminder that pain doesn’t have to equal feeling. I can live without hurting. I can live without the sting.

My fingers thread into his hair, and he bends his face into mine even though it’s still pressed against his neck. He cups my chin and nudges my face upwards. Our eyes meet, and the tears that were brimming in his not long ago have spilled down his cheeks.

“You don’t need it. I promise. You’re more than that. Don’t let it all destroy the person I know,” he whispers and his lip quivers. “Let me help you, Abbi. Not because of my sister or anything else. Let me help you because I need to.”

“I can’t replace her.”

“I know. I don’t want you to replace her. I want you to be you. I don’t want another sister. I want you. That’s it. I don’t want us to be skirting around the topic of us anymore. I want you and all your shattered pieces, if you think you can handle all my broken bits.”

“I don’t know.”

“Try. Because I won’t stop trying.”

I have no doubt. He hasn’t stopped trying since our first dance together, and his eyes promise me what his words do. So no matter how much it scares me, no matter how much I want to hide, I give him what he deserves. What, in my heart, I truly want.

“I’ll try.”

Because amidst all the chaos and heartbreak holding us together, he is my light in the dark.

Chapter Eighteen – Blake

She feels so small in my arms.

Her body is quivering and her chest is still heaving. My top is soaked from her tears, but I don’t care. The only thing I care about is the words she just said. Two tiny words that mean so much.

Two tiny words that have the immense power to change everything.

I tangle my fingers in her hair, breathe in, and tighten my hold on her. I don’t want to say what I’m about to. I don’t even want to think about it, but I have to. I need her to understand that I know. I know the pain she carries even if I don’t get it.

I need her to understand I can hold onto her broken heart the way she needs me to.

“Tori and I were inseparable. We danced together almost every day whether we has class or not, and when I was eight, we had our dream. We promised each other that when we were old enough, we’d leave London, fly to New York, and go to Juilliard. I always thought she’d go first since she was four years older than me, but she insisted she’d wait for me. She said she’d work and save all her money to get us here, then even if it all fell apart for her, she’d stay and watch me take the college by storm.” I swallow, feeling the same sting I always do. “She was my best friend as well as my sister, and it drove my parents batty. They hated I was closer to her than my brother – my only brother. My father dreamt of weekend football matches watching his boys play so he could boast to his friends. My relationship with Tori destroyed it. I was never going to be the dirty, ruffed-up boy my father desired me to be on a football pitch. In my mother’s words, I was always going to be “the fairy on a stage.””

“Blake,” Abbi whispers, clenching my top tighter.

“We spent hours making our plans. Where we’d live, where we’d work, what we’d see. Tori said more than once we’d be like live-in tourists. I couldn’t wait. I wanted nothing more than to achieve my dream with my favorite person. But it would never happen.

“If I knew then what I knew now, I would have tried harder to make her talk to me. If I knew I’d lose her just four years later, I would have never left her side. And I definitely wouldn’t have listened to my parents denying the very existence of depression. To them it was taboo, not something to be discussed, and there was no way on Earth their perfect baby girl was suffering from it. There was no way she was being bullied at the top-notch private girls’ school they sent her to. In their eyes, Tori was doing nothing but attention seeking.

“I hid everything for her. The late night crying sessions were blown off as the time of the month, or a sad film or television show. Even a sad chapter in her favorite book. Every cut or mark on her body was passed off as an injury from dance, hockey, anything. She had an excuse for every single one, and I never questioned it. I was only twelve. I didn’t have any reason to believe she would lie to me. Even when she asked me not to tell Mum about it, I didn’t ask why. I wasn’t blind – where I was the black sheep of the family, Tori was the eldest and the golden girl. But they never cared enough to listen.”

“Blake-”

“I found her.” I pause for a moment, choking back the tears building in me as the memory plays in my mind. “I found her in her room, curled into a ball on her blood-stained bed. She’d sliced her arms to pieces, but that was nothing compared to the gash on her thigh. She knew what she was doing – the coroner’s report later showed she’d severed right through her main artery. Every time I think about her that’s what I see. I see her surrounded by her soft toys, each of them a reminder of the girl she used to be. I see her art coursework scattered across her bedroom floor and the knife she’d used to make the cuts. And the worst thing, the thing that haunts me the most is I see her holding her ballet shoes to her chest.