“That’s not the problem either, Asa,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper. And then something in her expression broke, and she squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head repeatedly as apologies after apologies kept tumbling out her mouth uncontrollably.
“Oh my God,” she was muttering frantically to herself. “What have I done? What have I done? I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t —Asa, I’m so goddamn sorry—”
“Hey.” Asa jumped off the table and moved towards her, placing his hands on her shoulders in worry. “Hey, look at me. Look at me.” He took a hold of Carmen’s chin but she still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Mírame. Mírame, Carmen.”
Carmen grabbed Asa’s hand which was cupping her chin, her fingers holding on to it so tight he wondered if their imprints would be left around his wrist. Her eyes met his, and the raw but unidentifiable emotion in them knocked the air out of Asa’s lungs.
“I did something,” Carmen told Asa in a barely audible voice, her breaths sounding laboured even to his own ears.
Asa frowned, tilting his head slightly to the right as he observed her. Why did she sound so scared and worried? There wasn’t anything truly terrible that Carmen could’ve done to elicit such a deep sense of remorse from her.
Whatever it was that she’d done, she was probably allowing her mind to make it seem worse than it actually was because Asa knew that at the end of the day, Carmen did what she did because she felt it was for the best. Her decisions were never selfish. Of that he was much certain .
“It’s all right, mi amor,” he said softly, running his other hand down the length of her hair comfortingly. “Nothing you did could be so bad that it’d be unforgivable in my eyes.”
Her eyes grew the slightest bit watery at the edges, but Carmen seemed to have a stronger grip on her emotions this time around because she didn’t cry. Not a single tear was shed, her resolve as unwavering as Asa’s feelings for her.
Maybe that should’ve been the third flag. He was fighting to keep their relationship, while she was fighting to keep her composure.
“I didn’t mean it,” she eventually said, the words almost muffled by the choked tone of her voice.
Asa’s frown deepened. “Didn’t mean what?”
Carmen’s chin shook in Asa’s grip as her bottom lip trembled, causing the bubble of dread in his gut explode and trickle down his bones, flushing out any warmth that resided there.
“What I said that night.” Carmen gulped, blinking back tears as she struggled to maintain her calm guise. “I shouldn’t have said it… I—” Her voice cracked and she snapped her mouth shut, pressing her lips tightly together.
Asa’s mind flashed back to the morning of their fight, trying to pinpoint anything Carmen had said that was possible of placing her in such obvious conflict. But nothing stood out to him as something she’d want to take back; nothing she’d said that day was so cruel that she’d apologise this profusely—
And then it hit Asa.
Carmen wasn’t talking about the morning of the fight, was she?
“I shouldn’t have said it that night.”
Night.
What night was she referring to?
“Night?” He blinked, staring at her with a blank face.
Was it possible to see hearts break in the eyes of people? Because Asa thought he just saw Carmen’s crack in the way her eyes filled with anguish.
“The night of the party,” she explained, the words sounding as if she’d held her breath while speaking them.
What had she said during the best night of his life? What had she said that held so much significance that she now wanted to take those words back?
“Carmen.” He smiled in confusion. “There was nothing you told me that night that you need to take back, okay? You didn’t say anything wrong at all, nothing to apologise for regarding that party. It was perfect, mi amor. Perfect. Nothing you said or did back then had any problem.”
Carmen’s grip on Asa’s wrist tightened, if that was even possible.
“Yes,” she whispered, voice shaking as swallowed audibly. “Yes, it had.”
Asa’s brows pulled even closer together, and a small laugh left his mouth. “Love, trust me, you didn’t say anything wrong during that party. I would remember, okay? I’d remember because I can recall every single millisecond of that night. How could I not? It was the night you told me you were in love with—”
The realisation slammed into Asa like a truck full of explosives, cutting off his oxygen, stopping his heart and shattering the ground beneath his feet, all within the blink of an eye.
Time could freeze, right? Didn’t time have the ability to just stop? It had to, it just had to.
Because that’s what it felt like to Asa right then.
Everything was so still; he would be able to pick up on the sound of a pin dropping to the floor.
But everything was also spinning. So did time really freeze? Because Asa was still frozen, and his mind was just utterly and hopelessly blank right then. But his eyes could still see Carmen’s mouth moving, his wrist could still feel the pressure of her fingers, and Asa could definitely feel his heart breaking, breaking, breaking.
It wasn’t the kind of heartbreak where it just snapped into two or three. No, Asa felt his heart crack right in the middle and felt those cracks slowly spread over his heart until it was only a web of raw hurt and agony.
Then he felt pieces of his heart
