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Blinking, her eyes lift, and she furrows her brows. “Of course you were. You were the monster under the bed, Oscar. You tortured me.”
“I didn’t torture you,” I scoff.
“You stole my things and broke them. You tormented me. You spread rumors, and I had to leave my school. You traumatized me so much that even fifteen years later, I can’t get on an airplane.”
“What are you talking about?” I snap angrily.
“Are you serious right now? You know what you did to me, you enjoyed it, you reveled in making me as miserable as possible.” Her voice cracks as she speaks, and I can tell it’s taken a lot for her to say all of that to me.
“I spent a few weekends and some holidays with you fifteen years ago. I get that I was an asshole, I was pretty fucking angry, but?—”
Tears roll down her cheeks as she looks up at me with a mixture of fury and hatred in her eyes. “You showed me videos of planes crashing and children being carried away from crash sites in body bags on repeat for days. When we got on the plane, I had a panic attack and had to be taken to the ER in an ambulance.” Instead of getting angrier, her voice gets smaller and smaller with each word until she’s barely whispering.
“I…” I trail off, because now that she’s reminded me of it, she’s right, I did do that. Dad had booked us a vacation to Mexico, and I hadn’t wanted to go. I’d screamed and shouted and argued that I shouldn’t be forced to spend a week with him, and he’d ignored me. I’d been so angry, I’d decided if I had to have a terrible time, then Henrietta had to too. I remember her passing out and us missing our flight, but stupidly, I never considered that I was the cause.
“Fuck,” I whisper. “Is that why you took the bus here instead of flying?”
Still not looking at me, she nods.
The years after my parents’ divorce were rough. But until now, I thought I’d dealt with it. I thought I’d looked back at my behavior and at least understood it and accepted it for what it was. An angry kid who was hurting and lashing out. But this…until this moment, I hadn’t ever really thought about Etta and how my behavior back then had affected her. I’ve worked through how those years affected me, but never her. What the fuck do I even do now? I don’t remember everything I did. I don’t remember half of the things she just accused me of doing. But she’s not lying, I can see the truth in her anguish-filled eyes. “I’m…fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t. I’d forgotten about that until you just reminded me. And you still don’t fly?”
Still not looking at me, she shakes her head again.
“You had to leave school?” I ask carefully.
“You told my friends I was telling lies about them, spreading rumors that I thought they were ugly and mean and that I was too good for them,” she whimpers. “I didn’t have many friends anyway, and when they turned on me, I was alone. They weren’t happy about what you told them I’d said. Girls can be mean. After a while, Mom decided it’d be better if she homeschooled me.”
“Fuck,” I hiss, angrily clenching my jaw as I take in how hollow and fragile she looks right now. “I stole from you and broke stuff?”
“I had some collectibles. You took my new cell phone and broke a laptop. You destroyed my school projects.” She laughs, and the sound is so broken it hurts me to hear it. “You even poisoned me once.”
“I…” I trail off, because as she speaks, the memories that I’d repressed or forgotten or chosen to exclude all come back to me. “Jesus, Etta. Fuck.”
“So now you understand why we can’t do this. Why this all has to be a mistake.”
“No,” I growl furiously.
“Nothing should ever have happened between us. You’re my bogeyman, Oz. You’re my monster under the bed. Nothing good can ever happen between us.”
“No,” I snarl again. “Fuck that. I refuse to lose you over something that happened fifteen years ago. I’ll make it up to you, I’ll make it right.”
Shaking her head, she wipes more tears away. Grabbing her face, I force her to look at me, then lean down and lick the tears from her cheeks. “Your pain is mine now, Etta. I caused it, so it’s mine to keep, mine to fix, mine to own. I hurt you, and I’m sorry. I could tell you I was a mixed-up, angry, hurt kid, but I know that won’t change the past. But I can change things now. I can rewrite our future in spite of our past. I can be your perfect fucking antihero, your bad guy, your monster.”
She tries to shake her head, but I hold her still, refusing to listen to her tell me I can’t have her.
“Listen to me, Etta. Fucking listen and hear me. I am not letting you go. I am not giving up on us. You live here. You sleep here. You follow my rules, and you let me fix this because there’s no other option. There’s no future for either of us that doesn’t start and end with us being together.”
“Oz,” she whimpers my name, and my heart fucking breaks, shattering into shards at the sound of the pain I caused her in her voice.
“I won’t let you go, Etta. If you try to leave me, I’ll hunt you down and bring you back. You want to be my good girl, don’t you, Little One? You want to be good for me, and I promise I won’t be bad for you. I’ll control you, I’ll consume you, I’ll fucking own every inch of you, but I won’t be your monster anymore. Let me be everything you need, Etta. Let me take all that hurt and pain and trauma. Let me take it all, and I’ll change it. I’ll morph our awful start into something fucking incredible.”
Tears keep dripping down her cheeks, but she doesn’t try to stop them or wipe them away. I’m hurting her by not letting her run away from this, but I can’t stop myself. I won’t stop. More and more memories of the fucked-up way I treated her keep popping into my head, and I know it’ll take a lifetime to make up for what I put her through, but I have the rest of my life to try, and that’s exactly what I plan to do.
“I made breakfast,” I rasp, clearing my throat as I lean forward and lick away the tears that are coating her cheeks. “Pancakes and fruit. Let me take care of you. Let me feed you.”
She starts to shake her head, but I grab her chin and stop her. “I’m going to feed you breakfast,” I tell her, not asking anymore.
Leaning forward, I slam my lips against hers, slipping my tongue into her mouth and bracing myself for her to not react, but within seconds, her hands are tangled in my hair and she’s kissing me back, her tongue eagerly entwined with mine.
