Page 70 of Crazy for this Girl

She is everything.

“You came.” The relief coursing through me is so fucking strong that I don’t recognize the quick pull of her elbow before her tiny fist slams mercilessly into my ribcage.

“Where have you been?!” she raves at me, her voice cracking into a million and one pieces. Her crystal blue eyes glistening in unshed tears, and my heart shreds slowly like a potato getting stripped by a sharp peeler. Each thin piece are the seconds that have ticked by without any communication with her at all.

“Why didn’t you message me back?” she continues with a hard shove to my naked chest, causing me to stumble back a step. “You’ve been gone for months! What the hell, Cal?!”

“I know,” I mutter, reaching up to grab her wrists but she pulls away at them so I can’t touch her, and I immediately hope it’s not forever. “I didn’t—”

“Fuck you.” Those two words rattle my whole skeleton like a death sentence. A finale to us and everything. They’re so assertive and violent that I feel the lash of them beat across my chest. “Do you know how many nights I tried to figure out what I did wrong? Why you told me you were coming to North Carolina just to disappear out of thin air? How many times I went through our text messages to see if I missed something, or a clue that I was that stupid? Do you have any idea what you did to me?”

I shake my head because I wasn’t on her side of the equation, but I know how I felt. I’m versed in how brokenly crushed I was without her. “No, Laynee…I don’t.”

“Too many times. Too fucking many.” She suddenly pivots on her heels, and I panic, afraid that she’s gonna leave me, so I move to follow. My throat begins to close up, and my stomach knots distressingly before she twirls back around, and that’s when I bump into her chest.

It’s when I do something I’ve wanted to do for real instead of my attempts of getting rid of a pesky girlfriend last summer, playing down that us kissing because it was far from nothing.

My mouth crashes into hers before I can rationally talk myself out of it, cradling the back of her head just so it’ll give me a few seconds of bliss. A tiny fracture of happiness without anything interfering between us.

I kiss her exactly how I’ve dreamt it. The many instances where my tongue darts across her mouth to allow me inside.

To taste her again.

To make this real.

She doesn’t return it right away, stiff as a board against my half-naked body, but I don’t focus on that.

She’s here.

My fucking girl is here.

After every back-breaking exercise in training camp, the sleepless nights where I couldn’t get her out of my head and how distraught she must’ve been, she’s within my hold and reach, and I’d give anything to go back to before.

“I love you, Laynee,” I profess brokenly when I pry from her lips and catch her glossy gaze. I need her to hear me, even if she doesn’t want to. Even if this ends with her kicking me in the balls and fleeing from this room. “I’ve been in love with you since the first time I met you. I’ve been crazy for you since forever, but I didn’t want to mess us up.”

She slowly waves her head back and forth, either not wanting to believe me or that she just can’t.

“I do,” I repeat. “God, Laynee…” She’s more beautiful than I remember. Her flawless skin and that adorable nose. Those pink, puffy lips that beg me to kiss them again until I can make her forget everything that’s transpired.

And fuck me with those crystal blues always sucking me in and holding me hostage.

I’ve waited for Laynee, pined for her, and even tried to shove my feelings for her away, but always failed. It’ll always be Laynee Reese for me.

“I mean it, Laynee,” I vow more confidently. “I’m so sorry for everything. I love—”

“Why did you leave me, then?” Her face twists in pure agony that matches my own. It expels the betrayal and devastation left in its wake, shredding the both of us into tiny pieces. “What did I do?”

My chest twists so fucking hard that I think I’m going to have a heart attack.

Is that what one feels like?

Because I can’t breath right with how she blames herself for what happened, and not the other way around.

I could’ve been the asshole in this story.

I could’ve dragged her along for the ride and lied to her every step of the way. So why she believes she did something wrong crushes me.

“You didn’t do anything.” I bring my palm around from the back of her head and cup her cheek, needing her to desperately hear me. “You could never do anything that would make me leave you.”

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