Page 20 of Could Have Been Us
“I always knew she would be.” She came from Stella, after all.
Tears form in those beautiful brown eyes. She’s in so much pain, and I’m helpless to save her. “She looks like you.”
I close my eyes, imagining a version of Stella and me, hating the vision as it appears. “What did Samuel say?” I ask again, needing to get to a topic I can actually focus on.
“He was drunk. I don’t know that he even knew what he was saying. He’s in pain and he’s lost.”
I imagine how I would feel if Stella was taken from this world. How I would want to rip my heart from my chest because it wouldn’t be worth anything anymore. I would want to be in that hole beside her, and I haven’t spent thirty years by her side. I’ve just loved her from afar.
To anyone who knows us, we’re indifferent to each other. I like her fine enough as my best friend’s little sister, but nothing more.
She definitely doesn’t feel anything for me. I’ve taken from her, and she will never forgive me. Not that I would ask her to.
Yet, here I am, unable to stay away from the one person I should leave in peace. The woman who makes me weak because my love for her is so strong.
“He’ll be okay after some time has passed.”
Stella shrugs. “Hopefully.” After a few seconds, she speaks again. “Why did you really come here, Jack?”
“I told you.”
Because I hate when you suffer.
“You don’t want to talk about her.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
I look into her brown eyes, wishing I were a better man. A stronger one. One who could say fuck everyone and everything and lay my heart out for her, but Stella made up her mind a long time ago about us when we realized the mistake we made. Then we sealed our fate the day we gave up Kinsley. Thinking about Kinsley makes me remember too much about how much I love Stella, and God knows I need to forget.
“It was the worst day of our lives, Stella. Do you want to live it again?”
She sits on the couch as if the weight of the world is too much. “Some days, I feel like it was a dream or maybe more like a nightmare. Either way, it doesn’t feel real. It’s easy to go on with my life, pretending that we don’t have a child. And then—” She pauses, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I see you with Melia. I watch you lift her into the air, kiss her cheeks, and love her. I . . .”
“I know.” I stop her, needing her not to say it. “But Amelia isn’t our daughter.”
“No, she’s not.”
“It wouldn’t have been that way for us,” I remind her of why we did this.
She nods, looking away. “Probably not.”
“Definitely not, Stella. Your father threatened to take it all away from you. We would’ve been completely on our own. Your brother never would’ve forgiven me. We would . . .”
“We would what?”
Have loved.
In a perfect world, we would’ve been together. I would’ve said to hell with Grayson, her family, that was essentially my family, and school. I would’ve married her, given her whatever life I could, and we would have been together. But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in this tragically imperfect one.
“We would’ve struggled,” I finish.
“We could’ve had each other.”
“Could we, Stell? Could we have really had each other without destroying everything? Would you have wanted that? We were kids, and we didn’t have a fucking clue.”
“I would’ve wanted the moments,” she confesses. “I would’ve wanted whatever we could’ve had.” Stella gets to her feet, wrapping her arms around her stomach. “I wanted them. I was too young to fight for them, but the moments, Jack, they’re what matter.”
