Page 24 of Revive

“I don’t believe you.”

“Kiss me. Kiss me so I can show you just how much I want you.” He closes his eyes and shakes his head, and the switch in me flips. No longer able to bear his disappointment in me, I throw myself at him. I let my lips do the talking, and his can’t help but speak right back. It’s an old and tired conversation, one we’ve had many times. Promises we’ve made a hundred times, promises we’ve broken a thousand more.

The rest of my body buzzes back to life with every swipe of his tongue. We melt into one another and the walls between us break down. He takes hold of my arse, lifting me up and guiding us to the couch.

We sit, me straddling him with my hands still holding his face, desperate not to lose him to reality. His dick offers a warm welcome as my hips instinctively rock against his hard cock. I'm on the very edge of giving in, wanting to fall into him, and fall apart for him.

He's gripping my hips so tight, moving me back and forth, when all of a sudden, he stops.

“Drix?” I call for him and try to bring him back, my voice breathless, shaky and full of fear.

Resting his forehead on mine, he doesn't say a word, and it's the beginning of our connection severing slowly. I feel the loss of every sense, more hurtful than the one before.

“Sash,” he whispers into the empty room. “You need to go.”

I hear him, but neither of us moves.

“When I can’t hear you and see you and have the chance to taste you, I can’t want you.” His eyes break my heart before his words do. Conviction. Determination. Resolve. “And I can’t want you anymore.”

* * *

Two streetsaway from his house, and I pull the car over and park on the side of the road. I don’t know if my body is breaking down or trying to fight back, but I can barely breathe. My head is heavy, my lungs feel like they’re collapsing, and my throat is closing up on me through every uncontrollable sob.

I’ve done this, cry tears over Hendrix Michaels more times than I can count, but this, right now, constricted by the four doors of this car, it feels final. Like for the first time in my whole entire life I won’t be able to dust off my knees and pick myself up off the floor.

The worst part is these tears are my own fault. When I can’t seem but to be anything but reckless with his heart, how can I hate him for protecting it? For doing what’s right, even when it hurts. It’s what he’s always done. Be the bigger person. Be the better person.

He ignores my flaws for the most part, and all I do is let them be the reason why I will never give us another chance. It’s a self-imposed punishment because I don’t deserve him. I didn’t when every boy gave him shit in high school for how much he loved me. I didn’t when I accused him of not loving me enough. I didn’t when I gave my virginity to somebody else, and I hammered the last nail in the coffin when I fell pregnant with his brother’s baby.

I’m fucked up in the most clichéd of ways, and I broke Hendrix and I enough times just to watch him pick up all the pieces whenever I needed him to.

He’s done more for me than I’ll ever do for him, and it took a woman with hair like mine, a body like mine, and an appreciation for how fucking beautiful Hendrix is, just like me, to finally accept that I’m losing him.

I lean my head on the headrest and wait for the remaining tears to leave my body. I need to get home. I need to drink a whole bottle of tequila and sort out my fucking life. Before I know it, my daughter is going to leave me, and our home, looking for her own happily ever after, and every excuse I’ve ever had to avoid living my own life won’t be valid anymore.

Starting the car, I pull out and head home. Faster than is legal, I do the twenty-five-minute drive in fifteen. I fly through the door and remove every piece of clothing off my body as I make my way to the kitchen. By the time I’m sculling my second tumbler of tequila and grapefruit juice on ice, I’m standing in nothing but my bra and underwear, begging for the numbness to hurry up and takeover.

Pouring the third glass, I take myself and my liquid dinner to my bedroom. I set everything on my bedside table and walk into the back of my walk-in wardrobe and pull out a box I’ve kept hidden for a very long time. I take another large gulp of my drink before I open Pandora’s box.

I scatter the letters written in multi-coloured pen and covered back to front in adolescent handwriting, all over my bed. I find my most prized possession and bring it to my nose.

The paper is thick and green, folded ‘til it can’t be folded anymore. Sprayed in Hendrix’s sixteen-year-old cologne, it smells exactly the same way it always has. I open it and a small thin gold band falls out. I slide it down my left ring finger, but thirty-year-old me has bigger fingers, and it stops just before my knuckle.

Tracing the letters of each word, I read the note that became the beginning of the end.

Sasha,

I have a question for you.

When we get out of this place, will you marry me?

Drix.

“How can you be so sure?”I ask him, my face hurting from how wide my smile is right now.

We’re laying in the sandpit at the park, staring at the stars. A place that has become our safe haven ever since the night Hendrix made me come back here.

“I just know. I’ve always known.” My head rests on his inner arm while his fingers play with the strands of my hair. I hold the letter he used to propose and sniff it excessively, loving the scent of Hendrix all around me.

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