She squirmed in my arms, trying to get down, but someone would have to pry her from my lifeless arms before that ever happened. Reaching the door to my room, I kicked it open then made sure it was locked before crossing to the bed and carefully sitting her on the end.

“I didn’t leave you on purpose. They took me. I don’t even remember how I got here.” She crossed her arms over her chest, glaring up at me. “I tried to tell you all about it, but you never even called me back. I begged you, Ryan. So many times, until my throat felt like it was bleeding from screaming at you in those voice mails. And you didn’t even give me two seconds of your time.”

“Because I thought you were someone who worked for Sheena, trying to fuck with my head! She wanted me to suffer, Nova. Every day, from the moment my biological mother died, she made it her goal to hurt me as much as possible. She must have been planning the attack for years. Fuck, she’s probably in hell right now, chuckling it up, thinking I’m seconds away from swallowing a bullet because I can’t live without you.” I scrubbed a hand over the scruff on my jaw.

The agony I’d felt every time I’d seen a Colombian number pop up on my phone was just below the surface. I would never forgive myself for not answering those calls now, but at the time, it was all I could do to make it through each day without her. “Anyone who knows me is well aware that the only way to hurt me is through you. Hearing your voice would have given me hope, and then I would have once again been left with this gaping hole where my heart should have been when whoever was pranking me laughed and told me how stupid I was to think you were anything but six feet under.”

“Y-you wanted to kill yourself?” she whispered shakily.

“Yes,” I told her honestly, knowing it would hurt her, but unable to lie. Not to Nova. “Every day, as soon as I opened my eyes after leaving you behind in my dreams yet again, that was the first thought that would go through my head. To just end it. To die and then fight my way to wherever you were in the hereafter. But then I would think of how disappointed you would be in me, and then I would picture how upset Mom would be, and I would just suffer through another day. Because I couldn’t do that to either of you.”

Her sobs were like a gut punch, worse than any hit I’d taken in the weeks I’d fought in the underground cage fights. They knocked the air from my lungs, made my legs unsteady as I stood over her and watched the tears spill down her beautiful face. “I-I was so angry with you, Ryan. With everyone. I didn’t think about what you were going through. I’m sorry. Please, forgive me.”