Page 85 of Cross My Heart

Noah looks down at his feet as she walks past him and gets in her car, and there’s a thick silence between us as she pulls out of the driveway. It’s not until she’s gone that he looks up again, his eyes full of pain.

I turn on my heel and walk away, leaving the door open for him, and going straight to my room. I hear hurried footsteps behind me, the door slamming closed as he comes after me. But I wish he wasn’t here. I don’t want him to witness my pain. He’s going to take it the wrong way. I just need to cry this out so I can move on.

I shut the door behind me and fall to my knees next to the bed, burying my face into the mattress. My tears fall fast and hot, soaking into the sheets, and my shoulders shake with the force of my sobs. There’s incessant knocking at the door, but I ignore it.

“Tyler, please let me in,” Noah says softly.

“No,” I reply, my voice hoarse and gravelly. “I need to be alone right now.”

“That’s the last thing you need,” he snaps, and my body trembles. I can’t have him in here while I fall apart. I just can’t let him see me like this. It hurts too much. “I’m coming in.”

I stiffen as the door opens behind me, but instead of saying anything, I just take some deep breaths, trying to calm down. I wipe my tears away and watch as he sits behind me. Noah grips my hips and turns me around, hauling me onto his lap, and the tears fall again, this time faster than they were before. My nose is runny, and I can’t breathe, but when he grabs the back of my head and brings my head down to his shoulder, I go willingly. He holds me tightly as I continue to fall apart, and it’s soothing me more than I want to admit. It’s healing a part of me that doesn’t deserve to be healed.

“It’s okay to cry,” he whispers, kissing my head. “You’re allowed to be sad. You spent a decade with her.”

“I’m—” I hiccup. “I did her so wrong, Noah. I’ll never forgive myself.”

“I know.”

“She was my best friend, and I’ll never have that again.”

One for all, and all for one. But that will never be true again. Now it’s just Noah and I, and I should be happy. I finally got what I wanted. But it still hurts, and I don’t know that it will ever stop hurting.

“She’ll come around,” he whispers. “She loves you too.”

“You didn’t see her, Noah.” I shake my head, and his hand comes to my back, rubbing in soothing circles. “She’s done with me. She told me to have a nice life.”

Noah nods slowly, his hand stopping on my back. “Maybe. But we can’t fix anything, baby. Now we have to live with it.”

“I know,” I cry out, feeling my heart squeeze in my chest. “It just hurts.”

“You’re allowed to feel this.” He reassures me, and I pull back, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. Leaning back, I look at his face. He looks almost as sad as I feel, and I know he’s affected too. “I’ll be here the whole way.”

I nod. “Thank you.”

That’s all I say when what I really want to say is:

I love you, Noah Milner. It will always be us, until we’re old and gray, in sickness and in health, I’ll always be yours.

But I can’t say that yet.

Not like this.

So I keep it to myself.

Chapter 43

NOAH

Scarlett left this morning, and I’ve been comforting Tyler ever since. I understand it’s a huge change for him, so I’m not taking it personally. At the end of the day, she was a best friend to both of us, but mostly him for the last five years. Not to mention, having to leave behind the life you envisioned for yourself must be hard too. I won’t pretend to know what this is like, which is why I’m not offering any advice, but I’ll gladly be his shoulder to cry on. And he has been crying non-stop for the past fifteen hours. Well, he was, but now it’s as if a calm enveloped him finally and he’s quiet. His sobs have stopped altogether, and so have his sniffles, and he seems to be falling asleep.

I sigh softly, snuggling him closer, with me being the big spoon this time. My arm tightens around his waist slightly, and he groans. My face is buried in the crook of his neck, and I inhale the scent that is only his. He smells like home and something woodsy. Like pine trees and freedom.

Over the years, I’ve never felt like home has been a place. Not in the military, anyway. I’ve been overseas so much that I don’t even keep an apartment anymore. I keep having to break lease after lease with every deployment. Tyler is the only constant in my life. The light at the end of the tunnel. Every road leads back to him. He’s my home. The only one I’ve ever had. The only one I’ll ever want.

I close my eyes, and suddenly a memory assaults all my senses. I can practically smell the salty air of the beach, it’s so vivid. I taste cherry chapstick on my lips,hischerry chapstick, and lick them. He’s dancing around at the beach, the waves lapping at his feet, with the sunset behind him. Brown, curly hair, softly blowing in the wind. A bright white smile. And suddenly, his arm is outstretched toward me, his waiting fingers spreading wide as his hand connects with mine.

Promise you’ll wait for me, Tyler.

---