Remission [H.S. MATURE AU]

17.

"Don't you dare!" He complains. "Maybe I approached you because of Elle, but it's with you I fell in love with." He tries to reach for my hand but I quickly step back, away from his touch.

"You always knew everything... I can't believe." I shake my head to myself. "Every time I told you about my family and how painful it was for me, you never had the decency to tell me what you knew."

"You didn't want to know, what the fuck was I supposed to do?!" This time, he's the one raising his voice.

"Not even when you thought I was dead you said shit about it. You could've told my father and they could've kept looking for me, instead of giving up because they had a corpse in the morgue, for fuck's sake!" I give him one more push, screaming at him as hard as I can. At my words, I can see the way the guilt is eating him alive, probably has been eating him alive for a long time.

"You went missing... I didn't think about the possibility of it being Elle's body. I didn't even question it." He says in a weak whisper, keeping his eyes down.

"That's because you're a coward, that's what you are!" I spit at him with all my contempt, not regretting my words not even a bit and I don't regret it either when I see how painful they're to him.

"She was my only friend, Scar... the only person I had near, not because she wanted to sleep with me or to use me for my money. She just genuinely cared." He sighs, with a nostalgic smile on his lips and with his eyes sparkling because of his tears. "That was the only type of honest affection I had ever received and I thought it was love on my part, but you changed everything." He tries to get near me again. "You showed me how it really feels to be in love, to be loved." When he stretches his hand toward my face, this time, I let him touch me. I let him touch me because I'd like to believe his words. I'd like to believe all his lies one more time as if he'd never lied to me before, or trapped me into his twisted games. I'd really like to believe him. I still want to hold on to him, to this shipwrecked boat that is our relationship but I can't anymore. I can't break one more time, because of him. I can't act like nothing has happened and like everything will be fine. I can't ignore the feeling of nausea in the pit of my stomach every time he touches me or every time I think about my sister. I can't be blind anymore. I can't make a fool out of myself. While I think about everything all over again, it's at this point that it hits me. It's at this point that I understand something that kept making no sense to me.

"That night..." I say in realization, living it all over again in my head. I bitterly laugh, moving away from his hands from my face and backing away from his whole figure. "The night of the car accident." The terrified look in his eyes tells me everything that I need to know. "You saw her. You saw what I had seen." I feel a desperate urge to pull all of my hair out of my head for how mad I am right now. "You lied to me and to my parents," I scream at him, closing my hands into fists and making them collide with his chest without thinking about it too much. "You made everyone believe I was crazy, that I was out of my mind. You made me believe I was crazy." He doesn't try to stop me while I keep hitting him, knowing perfectly that I'm right, he's done all of it to keep his nasty secret from me. "I lost my fucking mind because of you and you just stood there, watching me, without doing a thing about it."

"I was so scared to lose you..." He sobs, not having even the decency to look at me in the eyes while he speaks.

"You're a fucking asshole... you ruined my life. Everything bad in my life happened because of you." He remains silent, he doesn't try to defend himself, I just see his face twisting into a grimace of pain at my words.

"It was all a game to you, wasn't it?!" He furrows his eyebrows and gulps again. "You never had her so you wanted to have me to satisfy your ego. To add her to your belt through me."