Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 51 - MAKING AMENDS

------James------

I sat outside my house, engine off, keys still in the ignition, door half-open but unmoving. The sky above was bruised, navy bleeding into rust, and the cicadas buzzed like something broken. I should've gone inside by now. My mom's probably peeking through the blinds, wondering if I'd finally lost it. Maybe I had. I opened my phone again. The video was still there, paused at the moment Betty's fist tangled in Olive's hair.

Play.

There it was. The fury. The chaos. Betty, dragging Olive down the corridor like a storm set loose in a cage too small. Her boots slammed against the floor like war drums. Her hair flared, burgundy flames streaked with platinum. I barely recognized her. She didn't look like the girl who used to fall asleep beside me, humming Taylor Swift songs under her breath. She didn't look like the girl who danced barefoot in the beach after finals week. No. This version of Betty wasn't trying to be happy anymore. She was trying to survive. Or maybe disappear. Or maybe become something else entirely.

Something I made.

I swallowed hard, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes until stars burst behind them. The guilt crawled up my spine like rot, slow and suffocating. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned." That used to mean something. It used to feel like a door creaking open in the dark.
Now it just echoed in my ribs, hollow and useless. Because how do you ask for forgiveness when you broke the only person who ever saw the good in you? I wanted to text her. Call her. Crawl on my knees if I had to. But what could I possibly say?

Sorry I turned your world upside down? Sorry I made you feel replaceable? Sorry that loving me cost you everything?

I stared at the screen again. Her eyes in the video weren't wild. They were dead. Like a candle that used to dance, now drowned in wax. I'd give anything to bring her back to life. But even God rested on the seventh day. And I'd spent every one before that ruining her. The door creaked open behind me. I didn't need to turn around. My dad's footsteps were never loud. Just certain. He stood there for a second, silent, like he wasn't sure if he should speak. Or maybe he just didn't recognize the stillness in me. That made two of us.

"You planning on sleeping in the car?" he finally asked.

I didn't answer. I didn't need to. He stepped forward and sat beside me, just close enough for our shoulders to almost touch. The porch light above us flickered once before settling into a soft glow.

"I saw that video," he said.

Of course he did. Everyone probably had by now. Our whole damn town fed on whispers and spectacle. I braced myself for the lecture. The disapproval. The same tired sermon about consequences and self-control and 'what kind of man are you trying to be, James?' But none of that came.

Just silence. And then...

"You love her," he said.

It wasn't a question. He said it like a fact, like gravity or time. I nodded. Once. Twice. Swallowed the lump in my throat.

"I hurt her," I murmured.

"I know."

"And I don't know how to fix it."

"You probably can't," he said, which somehow hurt more than anything. "Not all the way. Sometimes we break things too deep."

I turned to him. "Then what's the point?"

He looked at me then, really looked. Not like I was a disappointment or a burden or the echo of every mistake he ever made. Just... his son.

"The point isn't to erase the damage," he said quietly. "The point is to become someone who never makes that same damage again."