Page 165 of I Was Always Yours (RCA: Royal Crown Academy)

I work hard to keep the tremor out of my voice. “I’ve put up with you treating me poorly since Astor’s accident because I loved you. So much that it made me blindly choose you every day for years, even when you treated me like shit. But now I have to put myself first and look out for what’s best for me. And that’s not you.” I’m the one who takes a step forward this time as my eyes find his. “I need you to let me choose me, okay? I can’t do that when you’re everywhere I look, I can’t get over you when I’m constantly faced with how much I love you. So, I need you to disappear from my life. For good.” I add.“Can you do that for me?”

Even just saying the words rips me apart, but it feels more survivable than letting him hurt me again.

“Why did you just say that?” He demands, his sharp eyes cutting mine open and delving in deep to look at all my secrets.

“Because it’s what I need in order to have a chance in hell at getting over you.”

“You love me?” He clarifies, his tone disbelieving. “Why are you lying?”

It’s the last thing I expect him to say and it infuriates me.

“I can’t do this,” I say, and start to walk away.

His hand snakes around my waist and he pulls me back against him so we’re standing back to chest.

“You’re not going anywhere.” He snarls, holding me trapped against him. “Why the fuck did you just say you love me?”

“Because I do, you monster!” I shout. “How can you even ask me that question? I’ve loved you since I was nine years old. Now let me go before I scream and bring a quick end to this conversation.”

He releases me and I walk to the other side of the room. When I turn to face him, he hasn’t moved. Not an inch, not a muscle. He’s still anchored to where I left him, his arm hanging unnaturally away from his legs in the position he was embracing me, his expression incredulous.

“You don’t love me,” he says, his eyes haunted. “You love Astor.”

“I,what?” I exclaim, astounded. I have no idea what he’s even talking about or where he’s getting this. “Why would you ever think that?”

“Why wouldn’t I think that?” He shouts back. “I know you do. You have a tattoo in his honor, you dream about him and say his name in your sleep, you want to talk about him incessantly.”

“Because he was my friend!” I cry out. “Because I miss him and I want to talk about him, not because I was in love with him.”

He shakes his head and gives me a destructive look. “I found the note.”

“What note?”

“The note telling him you liked him, asking him if he wanted to be your boyfriend.” He adds almost triumphantly, like he’s caught me in a lie.

“Oh, my God,” I whimper, dropping my face into my hands.

“Yeah.” He says, and it’s almost accusatory now. “How can you say you love me when it’s been him this whole time?”

“It was you!” I yell back, uncaring of our neighbors. “It was you.” I repeat softly, throwing my arms up. “It was never him. How could it be him when there was you?” I ask rhetorically, because how could he have gotten it so wrong for so long? “That note you found was for you. When you walked in on us in the treehouse that day, he’d just finished helping me write a copy of the very same note to give to you.”

I walk into my bedroom, my feet pattering softly against the wood floors. When I come back out, I’m holding the note I wrote for Phoenix all those years ago in the woods. I’d kept it, hoping that one day I’d have an opportunity to finally give it to him.

I never thought it’d be like this.

As a goodbye, not a beginning.

I hand it to him. Something bottoms inside my stomach as I watch his fingers close around the piece of paper and pull it out of my grasp.

He unfolds it and reads the words I wrote when I was a ten-year-old lovestruck girl. His hands shake almost imperceptibly as he stares at the note.

“I loved him, yes, but I wasn’t in love with him.” I whisper, keeping my eyes downcast. “I’ve never been in love with anyone but you.”

I walk to the door and open it, standing by it with my hand on the doorknob.

“I was always yours, Nix. Always. There hasn’t been a day since I met you that I haven’t belonged to you. Even when you hated me, even when you never wanted me. I was always there. Ready. Waiting. Some days it felt like literallywillingyou to love me back. But I’m done now, you’ve officially broken my love for you. You’ll never get over hating me, you’ll never forgive me for the accident, and I think I’m finally ready to face that reality now.”

He walks over to me with a look I can’t read and places his hand on top of mine on the doorknob. I pull mine back like his touch burns me and he pushes the door closed, leaning over until it’s firmly shut.

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