DRAG - [h.s. au]

61

AN: IMPORTANT!!!! IF IT IS IN BOLD AND ITALICS, BENTLEY WROTE IT. 

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And still

They try

Again.

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HARRY

Bentley was nowhere to be found.

I was stranded at the apartment because she had taken the only other car we had here. Zayn had taken the mustang to go find Apollo, and she was in the Bronco.

I called everyone and let them know, and they drove around the entire fucking city with me trying to find her, but we couldn't find her.

She told me she'd be fine.

I had hope that she would.

It had been the hardest 5 hours of my life since she left. There was too much to think about and I had barely stopped crying. I felt the weakest I'd ever been after shedding all these tears, especially trying to explain it to everyone else when they came back to find all the poems scattered on the floor and my eyes a bright red from the salty tears.

"We got in a fight." Is all I could say.

I couldn't even put into words what finding everything out was.

Bentley had a heart problem and she knew, she'd always known... and she didn't take care of herself. She didn't want to, either. She wanted out, and that terrified me.

I knew she wasn't afraid of dying... and maybe that's why she did this. Maybe she did this because a part of her wanted it- death.

Death was something that had shrouded us the entire time we had been together. People dying around us, people dying at our hands, at the hand of those we hated... Death was always around.

Bentley was afraid of death.

"I'm not afraid of dying either... But I think I'm afraid of death... I think I'm terrified."

I don't move but my breathing changes at her admission. My eyes shoot to hers, and I don't think she even realizes that I'm looking at her as she rests her head on the pillow, black silk caressing her.

Death and dying are two different things. Death doesn't necessarily happen to us. It happens to those around us. Dying happens to us. People could be dying but that's not what Bentley means... she's talking about herself.

Her death.

Her dying.

I think she craves it... a death she knew was coming. Everything she did was a piece of death. She was giving it to herself little by little.

Tense driving. Cigarettes.

Diet Coke.

Some part of me was hopeful, hopeful that those water bottles I had seen her drinking more were her way of forgiving herself. Of treating herself better. A part of me wondered if the diet cokes were punishment.

She was hurting herself in the most secretive way possible: by hiding it in plain sight.

We gave her the Cokes and she always drank them. On her birthday, we got her a diet coke with a candle, and I had never seen her drink something so quickly.