"Because you really matter to me."
If Roxanna were being honest, those were the words she had wanted to hear back then—back when she was standing on the rooftop, when she wanted to end everything.
She had hoped that someone would run toward her, grab her, and beg her to step away from the edge.
[No one did that for me back then,] she thought bitterly. [But I won't let my Calen go through the same thing.]
Cyrus and Luan, who were standing behind her, froze for a moment. They finally understood why Roxanna had once said that she had hurt herself in the past.
She had been suicidal. Maybe a part of her still was, but not as badly as before.
For her, physical pain had been the only way she knew how to drown out the pain inside her chest, the pain that was inflicted on her by others, or by herself.
So yes, she understood Calen, at least a little. She had also been someone who cried with no one there to hold her.
