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My exes from high school only added in on top of the heartache I felt for Chad, so I locked it away. Stopped dreaming of the fairytales even though I want to believe in them more than anything. Especially with Rafe and Maggie now. I want Maggie to have a loving stepmother, not face anything like the stories, but the fear at what might happen if something took them away from me, is keeping me from them.
I mean if Chad could so easily leave me the way he did after everything I did for him, how can I trust that it won’t happen again?
“I never want to have my heart broken like that again, to never feel that kind of pain. I’ve sabotaged every relationshipI’ve had since then…and I really don’t want to do it to this one,” I add to Harrison who nods a bit.
“What if the answers aren’t what you want to hear?” he asks gently, but I know I have to hear them, whatever they are if I’m going to fight the need to run from Rafe and what I feel for him.
“I guess I’ll just have to make a choice finally. I’ll have to see if it’s worth it from there.”
“Okay, let me go grab something from inside,” he says, and I head to the end of the block and lean against the tree waiting for him.
We started walking when he got back, and I knew exactly where we were going. I stopped at the edge of the bridge and shook my head. “No…”
“If you want to know then you have to Amelia,” Harrison stated, and I fought against the fears that walking back out there would cause. “This is where he was when he called me, when he told me that he couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t understand what he meant but then the police called to say they’d found his body…”
“Why do this here?” I ask unable to look over the side of the bridge to see exactly how Chad had killed himself, looking at the dark, cold water that took the happiness from my life.
“Because he asked me to,” he admits to me, and I look at him in confusion.
“What?”
“Chad left a series of notes, to everyone, our parents, me, and you. He knew you’d take it hard, but he still couldn’t do it.”
“Do what? Why would he do it to me? Why after everything that it took for us to get to where we were would he do this?” I ask letting out my fury over it.
“He was sick Amelia.”
“I know that. I get it. He had depression after the accident with everything that happened, but to do this…”
“No Ame, he was sick,” Harrison says shocking me with his seriousness. “You know he didn’t lead the best life before you two found each other. He was so angry over losing his hearing and he fell into a bad crowd.”
“I know he did some stupid stuff when the doctors said his hearing loss was permanent. That he ran away for a bit instead of going to the new school. It’s why it took us so long to get to where we were, for him to accept that his life was different but not over, but he’d accepted it finally and things were getting better. So why did he do this?” I ask, the hurt still there despite the years.
“He found out about six weeks before he killed himself that he had HIV. The drug usage caused it, he got it from someone he’d shared a needle with,” Harrison says, his tone disgusted over it, but I still don’t see why that would send Chad over the edge compared to everything he’d been through with the accident.
“So? HIV is manageable. With the right drugs and monitoring, he could have lived a full life still.”
“He couldn’t see that. All he saw was him disappointing you and the plans that you’d thought for your future. He knew you wanted kids and because of his status, having them would put you at risk.”
“So he killed himself?” I state shaking my head at the idea of it. “Where on earth did he think that would be better for us?”
“I don’t know Ame, I really don’t. I told him to tell you about it and to talk it over with you, but he wanted to deal with it on his own. The same way he tried to deal with the hearing loss on his own.”
“And you never once thought to mention it to me in the nearly eight years since then?”
Harrison shrugged a bit stating, “It wasn’t my place Ame. I didn’t think he’d kill himself.”
“Yeah, well, neither did I. Not after what we’d been through. Not after telling him I loved him that night.”
“You did? Oh god Ame…honey I’m so sorry.”
“I killed him,” I mutter numbly. The memories of it haunts me, the look on Chad’s face, the shock, the pain…he didn’t have to do this. Didn’t have to kill himself over it. If he’d simply said he didn’t want me around, I would have left him alone. Yeah, I might have argued at first, but he didn’t need to dothis, did he?
“No you didn’t. He did it all on his own.”
“Because I pushed him into it, trying to show him that he had a future I only showed him how little of one he really had.”
“That’s not true…Amelia stop,” he calls out to me as I take off, getting the final bit of answer as to what happens when I really love someone.
