Page 22 of Until I Found You
“Just do me a favor, Hals. Please just stay away from Krate and any of the scumbags he runs around with, alright? They’re not good people, and I don’t trust them,” I say, lowering my voice. I know she can hear the worry in my voice as she peers up at me.
She’s trying to get a read on me, figure out what I’m not telling her but doesn’t fight me for more answers. I’m grateful as hell for it too. I don’t want to lie to her, but now isn’t the time that I fill her in on this. Not yet anyway.
“Okay,” she says. Very rarely does she give into me without pushing.
“You may not believe me. I certainly don’t deserve your trust anymore, but I don’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to you.”
My mind filters back to the night Gage died, the panic that consumed me. Picturing being in that moment but with Halle on the other end, I just can’t.
Resting my chin on my closed fist, I glance out the window at the street light in the alley behind her apartment building. The light is about to go out, so it flashes every few seconds. I let it distract me from the darkness of my thoughts.
“I do,” she whispers, catching me off guard. My eyebrows furrow and for a second, I’m unsure of what she’s talking about, but then my comment comes back to me. Hearing her tell me, even after everything happened and the pain I put her through, she still trusts me carries a lot of weight.
Her hand reaches across the center console and brushes against my bicep. My arm flexes under her touch. I can feel the warmth of the contact radiating down my arm and throughout my body. Only she has ever been able to make me feel this way. Seeing her, touching her tonight for the first time in years, it makes me wonder what I was thinking letting her go and leaving her behind.
I have thought about her every day for the past five years. When I first left, she would call or text me almost every day. For the longest time, I would sit and replay the voice mails she would leave, just using the sound of her voice as a connection to the loss I felt aching in my stomach. I saved her text messages and would re-read them when I was thinking about her, regretting my decision to leave. I left her with nothing but a goodbye, yet I used her words telling me she missed me to get through every day.
It made me feel incredibly selfish but giving her the same in return would’ve only been to ease the guilt I felt inside. It wasn’t going to help her move on, so every time I thought about responding back, I closed the message and turned off my phone.
When the messages stopped, I told myself I had lost her. She had let me go and I deserved to lose her. I hurt her in unmeasurable ways and I didn’t deserve the way she continued to put herself out there, not wanting to let me go. I thought she had and maybe I still have lost her, but hearing her say she still trusts me, even when I know I don’t deserve it, means more to me than I could ever put into words.
Reaching up, my hand folds over hers. Holding her small hand out in front of me, I press a soft kiss against the palm of her hand. I hear her breath hitch, not expecting the move, but I don’t let it stop me as I kiss down her palm to her wrist as her hand presses against my cheek.
For a moment, I close my eyes and soak in the feeling of her hand again in the same way I held onto her words. We sit like this for a few minutes. No sound, no words. Just the peace of having her next to me again filling the silence between us.
When I finally work up the courage to open my eyes, I’m surprised when I see the tears filling the brim of her eye.
“Halle,” I say, turning in my seat to face her. I hate seeing her cry. It physically pains me to see her anything but happy.
“No, it’s okay.” She waves me off, as she runs her finger underneath the edge of her eye, avoiding eye contact with me.
“I should head inside. It’s been a long day and I’m exhausted,” she says, looking back at me. She puts a smile on, but I know better than to believe it. It doesn’t meet her eyes and I know she’s just forcing it, doing her best to fight off the urge to show any emotions.
I want to push her on it. I want to beg her to stay here, with me. I want to change the subject and promise her it will be different, but I can also see the fatigue in her eyes. The exhaustion that’s weighing on her, so I decide against it.
It’s not the time or place. I don’t deserve for her to give me a second more of her time, even if I’m a selfish, greedy bastard who wants to soak up her sun and bask in it.
“Alright,” I say, sitting forward to turn off the ignition.
“You don’t have to get out. I can see myself inside. Thank you for the ride and making sure I was okay.”
“Of course,” I say, reluctantly.
The edge of her mouth curves into a small smile as she reaches forward to grab her purse, pulling the keys out and clutches them in her hand.
She mutters out a soft “goodnight” as she slips out of the passenger seat and shuts the door behind her. As soon as she’s gone, I feel like all the air is sucked out of me and I’m left feeling deflated.
I watch her toned legs eat up the distance, taking her further away from me. My eyes don’t leave her as she climbs up the stairs. She turns back to see if I’m still here and when she spots me watching her, she raises her hand in a small wave before sticking the key in her door and disappearing inside.
It hits me how much things have changed between us over the years. I hate how different this feels. This isn’t who we are, how things were supposed to be. Regardless, I know there is no one to blame for this but myself.
Turning the key in the ignition, I shift the gear into drive and head for home. I force myself to remember why I made the decisions I have, and, in the end, I know Halle is better off without me.
For those few minutes though, I let myself wish it were different.
