Page 20 of Revive

“You’ve been begging me for years to talk and now you’re going to turn me away.”

“Turn you—” Pinching the bridge of my nose, I take deep breaths, trying to calm myself down, knowing if I don’t shut this conversation down one of us will say something we will regret. Without an audience, the claws always come out. “That’s right, Sasha. Years. Years, I’ve been trying and now you’re ready, I’m supposed to just jump for you?” The air suffocates me, everything feeling too tight. My clothes. My skin. Every emotion adding an extra layer, determined to bury me alive. “Are you hearing yourself right now? Years I’ve put up with your indecisiveness and now you see a little competition and you want to stake your claim?”

“So, sheiscompetition?” Fixated and stubborn she refuses to accept there’s nothing going on between Taylah and me.

“I don’t know what she is, but I didn’t know you were in this race.”

“I’ve always been in the race, Drix.”

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

“Why are you so surprised?”

“Why?” I cut myself off for the second time.Deep breaths. “You’ve spent years avoiding me, telling me it’s too complicated, or how Dakota finding out about our past is just too much for you to handle, and now Taylah shows up, and you’re what? Ready to make this work?”

“No, it’s not exactly like that.” Her cryptic rejection still hurts, and I hate that my mind is telling me to argue with her, not wanting to be at her mercy, but my heart still waits for the day where she’ll agree, unconditionally to be mine.

“Enlighten me. Please.”

“Before you left...” The sentence doesn’t even need to be complete to conjure up the images, the feelings. Every touch. Every taste. “Since then I can’t handle the thought of you with anyone else.”

I find myself in my bedroom, my aimless pacing leading me to the place where it all happened. Weak knees, sagging shoulders, the strength to fight with Sasha has been decimated with a few words and an avalanche of memories.

“So explain this to me, you can’t handle the thought of me with anybody else, but you’re still not sure we should be together.”

“I just saw you two together, and I know I’m losing you.”

Along with my body, my voice loses all its fight. “You can’t lose something you never had, Sash.”

“Let me come over,” she interrupts.

“No,” I say with forced conviction. “You might not be able to watch me with someone else, but I can’t let my hands touch you, my mouth taste you, and my heart fall deeper in love with you, just to watch you walk away from me one more time.”

“I need you.”

“No, you don’t. You’re just jealous,” I say, trying to simplify our circumstances. “And jealousy makes you say and do crazy things. It always has. I’m not going to be another addition to your list of regrets. Not this time.”

“I regret a lot of things in my life, Hendrix Michaels, but you are not one of them.”

“After all this time, Sasha.” I shake my head to an empty room. “I find it really hard to believe you.” I let out a long, low sigh, defeated, again. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Dr—”

I end the call. I just can’t go around in circles anymore. I’m dizzy. All we do is dig up old dirt, shifting it around, never leaving the secrets, lies, and betrayals alone long enough to settle.

I know it wasn’t all bad, but as the years pass the good has become harder to remember.

Leaning against the brick fence,I wait for Sasha. Anxiety floods my insides, my palms sweaty in anticipation. Tonight is the night we stop dancing around our feelings and I tell her I want her to be my girlfriend. She’s been my best-kept secret. Even from Jagger.

But over the last month, I’ve been a bit more forward. Her shy smiles and flushed cheeks spurring me on, proving I didn’t imagine the attraction between us. Tonight, we’re going to go to the party,together,and after so much worry and uncertainty, she’s finally going to be mine.

I hear her voice before I see her. “Mum, I’m going out with Drix. I’ll be back later.”

“Okay, don’t forget to check in.”

“I’ll send you a text.”

“Can you just call, you know I can’t work out how to write back.”

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