Page 69 of Crazy for this Girl

For years, his prior threats I believed were just that; my so-called fixation over a girl who was never going to be anything spectacular should’ve been my red flags.

I just thought leaving California would’ve been as easy as that. Booking my flight, packing my shit, and getting the hell out of Dodge without him breathing down my throat about taking over his hotels and stepping into his shoes. I guess the last thing I said to him about his national corporation didn’t pan over well because I told him to go fuck himself with his own company.

Motherfucker got the last laugh, though.

I never got to explain a thing to Laynee about not showing up at the airport, what was happening, and why I wouldn’t be with her in North Carolina.

The idea of how she must’ve felt when I didn’t arrive tears me up inside. How upset she must’ve been; what Laynee could’ve been feeling. So hurt and betrayed that I can’t even imagine how pissed off she is with me.

She’s only proving it by not responding to any of my messages, and I’m freaking the fuck out.

I can’t not see her.

I’m going crazy with the prospect that I’m going to need to go back through another round of training then get shipped off across the world and not see those beautiful blues stare back at me with any sort of emotion—happy, pissed, worried, excited, it doesn’t matter.

I need to see her.

When I arrived in Charlotte, I only had two days to locate her, explain myself, and pray to fucking God that she forgives me. I took a taxi from the airport that cost me an arm and a leg. When packing for boot camp, I brought some of her letters with me, so I have her address. Along with the first picture Laynee took of us as my father shoved me from my bedroom, threatening to throw me down the fucking stairs if I didn’t move.

Checking into a hotel I booked that I asked Laynee to meet me at, I spent my first day there waiting for her. When I woke up with still no word from her from the multiple text messages I had sent, I went to her house, working with zero clues on where she went to school since we’re in early September and if she may be out of state.

Switzerland seemed to never be off the table, and the more time that goes by, the more I realize how much she may have jumped on that opportunity.

And if she did, I’m so beyond fucked.

My chest hurts as I’ve double-guessed everything from what I say or even tell her as the hours go by. Especially after a second failed attempt at Laynee’s parents’ house with no one being home, I go back to my outdated room, hopeless as all hell because the odds of Laynee coming to me are slim to none at this point.

I sent another mindless and pleading text to her, letting her know I’m in town and I need to see her face. The hours tick by slow and painful at the millions of times I’ve looked at the clock. I’m not scared of going overseas as much as I am seeing her for possibly the last time.

I’m in love with her, and I want her to know in case I’m never able to say it.

She doesn’t need to wait for me, I’d never ask her to, but I want her to. I’m so in love with her, it’s sick. I’ve been in love with her since the first summer we met. From the moment she looked at me like I was the biggest inconvenience, it wasn’t much farther after that, that I vowed I was going to marry this girl. I’ve never felt so drawn to another human being in my life, and without her, for the last few months, I’ve been honing misery but not drive. I need the latter to live if I’m going to get deployed. If I want to come back home, I have to be on my game so we can be together.

Taking a shower, I stand under the hot water and demand that life give me a fucking break. To make her come to me because I didn’t do this out of my own free will, but I’m not sure of how much I should even tell her. News reports come in every hour on the hour with updates on the war in Iraq from the news stations, and I don’t want her to obsess over that when she’s going to school to make something of herself.

Getting out of the shower, I wrap a towel around my waist and run my palm over the clipped hair from boot camp.

Looking at myself in the mirror is terrifying because I don’t know that guy anymore. The glorious outlook on life was assassinated when my father told me he signed me up to be enlisted and there wasn’t shit I was going to do or be able to do to get out of it.

Add on that, he said he’d find a way to fuck Laynee’s life or her family’s, so I went unwillingly to San Diego like a good little soldier. I wasn’t going to call his bluff with the amount of money I know he has and the powerful connections he obviously welded to get me into this predicament.

Ripping open the door, I stride to my bed to grab my boxers when I feel the shift—the violent crack in the air. The soft caress of someone else being in the room with me. My heart sprints nervously and excitedly in my chest that my wish has finally come to fruition as I step to my left to look down the narrow hallway at the door to find Laynee inside and staring right back at me.

I don’t dare take another inhale in fear that if I move, she’ll disappear. Those champagne-colored locks drape longer down her shoulders and those tight jeans she’s wearing along with a white tank top have me already hard as fuck.

Try jacking off to anything with a bunch of fellow Marines up your ass.

Some do.

I couldn’t.

“Laynee.” Her name is a filtered whisper that I think barely makes it out to be heard by anyone but me before she steps forward, then proceeds to keep coming toward me.

She’s on a mission; she’s pissed.

However, through the darkness of the hall, she brightens, which makes sense because she was always that blazing element in my life.

She was everything.

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