like the bullet you never saw coming; beth

[adna]

one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing
one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling
one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide

If there is one thing in her life that she does not regret, it is her children.

She has loved them wholeheartedly. Even when Bela and Rupture had been born, and she had cried into their fuzzy necks, she had never regretted them. Regretted that she could not give them a happier life or that she could not be a better mother, but never once regretted their existence.

They were bright spots of joy. Beautiful and fierce and so undeniably perfect.

So it has not crossed her mine that she would regret it.

Even when she was alive with pain from the missing of him—the massive hole that he had left in the very center of her—she had not regretted their time together. So it cuts through her when she hears his words. Her breath whistles out of her and she finally looks up, studies his face, her green eyes overly bright.

“How relieving to hear you do not regret me,” she says with venom on her tongue, mistaking his words as cutting. Her ears flip back and she takes a step toward him instead of the direction she had been heading. Her anger is such a volatile thing and it is easier for her to grasp onto it then feel the full depth of her pain, her longing. It is worse, now, looking at him then it had been when she did not know where he was.

It is worse to be so close and yet still feel that chasm yawning open.

So she grows angry. She lets it settle onto her like armor and she lifts her chin defiantly. “I will make sure to tell our child that, Bethlehem.” His name almost sucks the anger out of her in a gut punch but she keeps going because the only way through the fog of misery is to burn it down.

“I will tell them you do not regret them.”

ADNA