Waiting for a Heart Long Dead

I took off the engagement ring and tossed it onto the pile of clothing.

"Nathan, I shouldn't have clung to you," I muttered. "I won't cross that line again."

Ever since I started falling for him, I stopped calling him my brother. Using "Nate" instead of "Nathan" made me feel like we were already something more.

I told myself that if I never said what we were, nothing would stand in our way. But it turned out he just never loved me like that.

When he overheard me, Nathan stopped on the stairs.

The blood on the carpet was hard to miss. His eyes widened at the sight of it, and he rushed over to me. As he kneeled on the floor, he pulled me into his arms. He looked just as frantic as he had that day at the funeral parlor. "Willow!" he gasped.

"Willow, you sure know how to play the long game." Lily sneered.

Her mockery seemed to snap Nathan out of it. He promptly let go and threw me to the floor.

Lily then picked up the ring and slid it onto her finger. After that, she grabbed a costume from the pile and said she wanted to try it on, just to see if Nathan thought it looked good.

I closed my eyes as a sharp, stinging pain spread all over my body.

Nathan used to know I was terrified of pain. Whenever I was sick, he would never leave my side.

There was even once when I had a fever at school while he was away on a work trip. In the infirmary, I had bitten someone's hand and cried my eyes out. When Nathan heard of this, he drove three hours through the night to get to me.

"Willow, I'm here," he'd said.

Back then, I knew he would come for me, and he knew I would wait too.

Now, blood was dripping onto my lashes and slipping off.

The air felt frozen too.

Suddenly, a piece of candy landed on me. It was my favorite handmade kind.

In the past, Nathan used to buy them just to cheer me up. I never imagined he would still carry a few pieces in his pocket now.

My fingers tightened around the candy. For some reason, my eyes began to sting with tears too.

At that moment, Lily spat on the ground. The candy she had in her mouth—wet with spit—fell on my face.

"That's disgustingly sweet. Candy from the street stalls just doesn't taste like it did when we were kids," Lily said. "If it hadn't come straight from Nate's mouth, there's no way I would've eaten such things."

One of the purest memories I had was now part of their intimacy. I felt sick to my stomach.

I looked at Nathan, and his gaze started to dart around. "Go to the prayer room and repent. I'll go get you some painkillers," he said without looking me in the eye. "As long as you learn your lesson, I'll let this go."

My head suddenly cleared, and I finally realized that he had always been like this. Every time I hit rock bottom, he would carelessly show me a bit of sweetness. It was an endless cycle.

The past played clearly in my mind, but I watched the story that used to be mine like a passerby. I felt nothing at all.

When I was back in my bedroom, I took our photo off the wall. I tossed it into the box along with the prayer journal where I had written the same prayer for him a thousand times.

Before I could finish packing, the prayer journal was soaked through with a cup of water.

Just then, I looked up and saw Lily standing there, holding the painkillers with a mocking smile.