Page 100 of Unspoken Words
“No, I wasn’t, or you wouldn’t have given up. You wouldn’t have chosen Lilah over me.”
“I DIDN’T CHOOSE LILAH OVER YOU.” He ran his hands through his hair, his knuckles white as he gripped it, his voice softening. “I chose Max. I had to.”
His shoulders sagged, so I lowered myself to sit beside him. I honestly didn’t want to fight. My fight was gone. It had been gone for years. All that was left was defeat and a useless sadness.
Silence settled over us and we let it for a while. It was a peaceful referee, one that didn’t judge, and one that waited for as long as we needed, which worked out to be as long as it took me to pick the nail polish off my fingernail.
“So much was unspoken between us, Connor.”
He didn’t answer and, yet, I could practically hear the words in his head.
“The problem with unspoken words is that silence can say so many things, and more often than not, it’s all true.”
“Or it’s all wrong,” he added.
“Yeah, so I guess we’ll never know, will we?”
Turning to face me, his eyes were tired and sad, red and dry. “Loving you was as natural as breathing, and when you left, all I could do was hold my breath.” He took my hand in his and rubbed his thumb over my tattoo. “I’ve been holding it ever since, until yesterday, when I saw you for the first time in four years.”
I glanced down at our fingers and slowly eased my hand free. “If loving me was so natural, why could you never tell me so? Why was it so painful? Surely it’s not meant to bethatpainful?”
“Love hurts no less than it’s supposed to.”
I scoffed—irony was a funny thing. “You should write that into a song.”
“I have. It’s titled ‘Love Hurts No Less Than It’s Supposed To’.”
We both tried not to smile but failed.
“I’d love to hear it.”
“You will. I need help polishing it.”
“Ha! You do, do you?”
“I do.”
A weird sense of calm settled around us, so, once again, I smoothed my hands over my lap.
“Ellie?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. I really am. I don’t know what more I can say other than you were the best thing to ever happen to me, and I ruined it. I took you for granted and fucked everything up, and every day since, I’ve missed you endlessly. The way your emerald eyes shine when you smile and how they glitter when you laugh. Fuck, I’ve missed that. And that laugh. My God, your laugh punches a hole right through my chest. I’ve missed how sweet you smell, how soft your skin is, the taste of your lips … the fire in your heart. But most of all, I miss the way you loved me. Nobody loved me like you did.” He scrubbed the palms of his hands over his face. “But my fuck up led to Max, and I wouldn’t change that or him for anyone or anything.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” I said softly, my heart an erratic mess. Everything he’d just said was four years too late.
“I just need you to know that I never meant to disappoint and hurt you, and if I could go back, that’s the one thing I’d change.”
“I know that.”
“Good.”
Relaxing, I flopped back onto the leather. “We were young, impressionable, curious, and naïve. Honestly, looking back now, we were definitely in over our heads, so maybe what happened was for the best.”
He shot me a look of annoyance. “You don’t mean that.”
“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. All I know is that we both screwed up. We didn’t tell each other everything that needed to be said. So maybe we were supposed to screw up, you know?”
