Watch Over Me (24 page)

It's strange being in his home without him here. Even though he's at work, his presence
is everywhere. No matter which way I turn, no matter what room I walk through, I can
see him, feel him, hear him…he's everywhere, and for the first time since I met him,
it makes me angry. I don't want him invading my life anymore. I don't want to see
him everywhere I look or think about memories of the two of us together in every part
of the house I walk through. It takes everything in me not to shove all of his mail
off of his kitchen table, knock the framed pictures of his family off the walls, or
pick up his lamps and throw them against the wall. I want to break him like he broke
me. But the things in this house are just that: things. Breaking them won't hurt him;
they won't shatter his heart or his soul. These things can be replaced after they've
been broken. You only get one heart and soul and what the hell are you supposed to
do with those things after they've been destroyed?

I ignore the happy memories of us curled up together on his couch watching a movie
and think about the bad things instead. I think about his deception and his lies.
I think about how in just seven short weeks I felt so comfortable with him and how
it felt like I had met him before. I think about how afraid I was to tell him what
I'd done at the cemetery a year ago and how I didn't want him to look at me any differently.
It's such a joke, all of the anxiety I had about something that he already knew about.
He knew everything about me and never said a word.

I walk into his room and refuse to look at the bed. I refuse to remember how it felt
to be wrapped up in his arms and close to his body. I won't let myself think about
the words of love he whispered to me and how they were all a lie.

I don't even know what I'm doing in his room. I don't know what I'm looking for or
what I hope to find, but I have to do something. I need answers and I need them now.
I begin dragging all of the clothes out of his dresser drawers, tossing them onto
the floor in huge piles. When each drawer is empty and I find nothing, I move on to
his closet, then under his bed, and then to each of his nightstands. I empty the contents
of his entire room onto the floor, and when I find nothing that connects him to me
or my mother, I crumble to the ground in the middle of clothes, shoes, sports equipment,
old textbooks, and photo albums. I've obviously seen too many movies. I've read too
many stories where a creepy stranger fills their room with secret photos and notes
that implicate them in their deception. Did I really expect to find a box full of
black and white photos of me taken with a telephoto lens? I hug my knees to my chest,
rocking slowly back and forth.

I don't know how long I sit among his things, staring off into space, but it's not
long before I hear his voice behind me.

"If you wanted to do a little housekeeping, I've got some dirty clothes in the laundry
room you could have tackled," Zander says from the doorway of his room with an uncomfortable
chuckle.

I don't turn around to face him, and I don't move from my spot on the floor. I can
tell by his laugh that he knows why I'm here. His friend at work probably told him
what happened. It makes me sick to my stomach to know that a stranger knew more about
my life than I did and that Zander confided in him instead of me.

"How?"

I only say one word to him, but that one word is enough. He knows exactly what I'm
asking for, and he can probably tell by the state of his room that if he doesn't tell
me the truth once and for all, this won't be the only damage I do to his home. I've
never been filled with this much anger or hurt. I should be ashamed of acting like
a child and making a mess, but I'm not.

"I was her radiology tech when she was first diagnosed. I'm the one who ran the initial
test on her confirming Leukemia. And then over the two years she was sick, it just
happened that I was always the tech on duty when she came in for scans. I started
picking her up from her room and taking her down for her scans on my own instead of
letting an orderly do it. We had a lot of time to talk."

I close my eyes and think about all the times over those years that my mother needed
an MRI or an X-ray or some other imaging test, and it occurs to me that she would
have had a lot of time to talk to him, a lot of time to talk about her life and her
one and only daughter.

"Did she tell you to stalk me after she was gone or was that something you decided
all on your own?" I ask angrily, pushing myself up from the floor so I can face him.
I want to see his face. I want to watch and find out if this time, now that I know
everything, I can easily recognize the lies.

"I didn't stalk you, Addison. I kept an eye on you to make sure you were okay."

I let out an unattractive snort and roll my eyes at him.

"Oh, I'm sorry, is that the new technical terminology for following someone around,
knowing everything about them, and then tricking them into loving you? My bad," I
tell him sarcastically.

He closes the distance between us and reaches out for me, but I quickly sidestep him.
I don't want his hands on me. I don't want him anywhere near me. His face falls when
I continue walking backward until I bump into the wall next to the door.

"I'm sorry, Addison, I'm so sorry. I was going to tell you. I swear to God it was
killing me to keep this from you. I knew if I told you too soon that you would walk
away. I didn't want to lose you. I love you. Please, you have to believe me when I
say that," he begs.

"You don't love me. It was all a lie. You knew everything about me the entire time.
This entire time I thought it was real but it never was. You just felt sorry for me,"
I tell him with a sob.

I don't want to cry in front of him. I don't want to tell him that just being here
in the same room with him is cutting holes in my heart that is only being held together
by the tiniest of threads.

"It was
never
a lie and I
never
felt sorry for you. I worried about you, and I wanted you to be happy. From the first
moment I saw you in that hospital when you were visiting her, I knew I wanted to know
you better. It was wrong and I
knew
it was wrong, but I couldn't help it. You were so beautiful and so strong. Every
time she got bad news you held it together for her. I've seen grown men break down
in front of their families and an entire staff of doctors, but you just held your
head high and gave your mom the strength and the courage to keep on fighting," he
tells me, reminding me of all the times I just wanted to race out of her hospital
room and scream and cry at the unfairness of it all, but I never did. I never wanted
her to see how petrified I was of losing her.

"She talked about you constantly. About how close the two of you were and how it scared
her to death having to think about what it would do to you when she was gone. She
knew your father wouldn't be able to be strong for you, and she worried about how
that would affect you. She saw the way I looked at you when I would see you from a
distance, and she joked with me about all of the questions I would constantly ask
her about you. During her last appointment, she made me promise to find you and make
sure you were okay if something ever happened to her."

His words do nothing to ease the betrayal. If anything it makes me feel even more
alone and more angry to know just how close he thought he was to my mother that he
could make her a promise like that.

I cross my arms over my chest and don't say a word as he continues with his explanation.

"I tried to stay away from you, I swear. I knew it would be crossing so many lines
if I tried to contact you after I found out she passed away, so I did my best to ignore
the promise I made to her and forget about you and move on," he continues. "But then,
one night, I was on my lunch break, and I went upstairs to the ER to talk with my
friend Nate. I had just started talking to him about some plans for the weekend when
the paramedics burst through the bay doors and we were suddenly surrounded by doctors
and nurses and people shouting orders. I took one look at the gurney and my heart
instantly fell. I saw you lying there unconscious, your arms, clothes, and the bed
covered in blood, and it scared the hell out of me."

I don't want to relive that day again, but I can't help it. Everything is so vivid
that I can almost taste the clean, antiseptic smell of the hospital, feel myself being
lifted off of the gurney, and hear the shouts and orders of the doctors all around
me. Except this time I hear Zander's voice, clear as a bell, asking me to open my
eyes and telling me everything will be okay. I hear his voice talking to me right
now, and I hear his voice that day in the hospital. Knowing he was the one speaking
to me trying to keep me alive should fill my heart with warmth, but it doesn't. I'm
embarrassed and I'm ashamed, and I'm angry that he saw me that way. He saw me during
one of my weakest moments, and he witnessed just how broken I really am.

"It was my fault. I should have kept my promise to her. It never would have happened
if I would have just kept my promise," he states sadly.

"Well, lucky for you, you won't have to be plagued by all of this self-doubt and guilt
anymore. You took one look at me and thought you could fix me. I don't need your help,
and I don't need your pity," I tell him as I turn away from him and ignore the pain
written all over his face. "From now on, stay the hell away from me."

I turn to leave, furious that he basically just admitted he was with me out of guilt.
He felt like my suicide attempt was
his
fault for not doing as my mother asked. All this time I thought he was with me because
he wanted to be, not because he felt like he had to be.

"Please, Addison, don't leave. Not like this," Zander begs, following behind me as
I stalk through his house to the front door.

As I turn the knob and pull open the door, he reaches his arm around me and smacks
his palm against the door slamming it closed.

"Please, don't walk away. I'm not explaining this right. I never pitied you, I swear
to God. I love you. I've loved you from the first moment I saw you. I don't want to
lose you like this."

He's pressed up against my back and his lips are at my ear as he pleads with me. It's
so hard to stay strong and not give in when he's standing this close to me. His hand
still rests against the closed door and his arm cages me in. I don't know what to
do, and I don't know what to believe. I want to turn around and face him so he can
wrap his arms around me and take away all of the hurt. But he's the one who caused
the hurt this time, and forgetting that fact won't make the pain disappear. I can't
keep sweeping my problems under a rug and forgetting about them. Right now, Zander's
lies are a huge problem, and I refuse to ignore them.

"You should have been honest with me. I've spent the last year and a half having my
father look me in the eye and lie right to my face, over and over. I thought you were
different. I thought I could trust you," I tell him as I turn the knob on the door
again and open it wide.

His hand falls from around me, and he doesn't try to stop me this time.

"You can trust me, Addison. Please, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. I'll do
anything to make this better."

I pause in the doorway and ignore every instinct telling me to turn around and give
him another chance. I ignore my heart as it beats furiously in my chest at the thought
of walking away and never seeing him again. I've trusted my heart for far too long,
and it's done nothing but bring me pain. I need to stop thinking with my heart and
use my head instead. If I would have gone into this thinking clearly, maybe I would
have seen the signs of his betrayal. I'm done with people taking advantage of me and
walking all over my blind trust in them.

"Just stay away from me."

With one last slice to my heart, I walk out of Zander's house and out of his life
without saying another word.

"
Life is hard, Addison. Everyone gets knocked down once in a while. The important thing
is that you pick yourself back up again. You pick up, you move on, and you do your
best. That's all I want is to just see you do your best," Dr. Thompson tells me. "It
breaks my heart to see you like this when I know you have so much more life in you
and so much more to give people."