Page 26 of The Girl I Once Loved

You mean you don’t want to make things harder for you.

She’s moved on.You’re the one still hung on what could have been.

I grit my teeth and curse out all the twinkling stars that decided to come out tonight just to celebrate her return. They mock my suffering just as much as her indifference always has.

Because her apathy is all I have now.

It’s the only plausible conclusion I can make from someone who, in the last seven years, felt no need to come home.

Not once.

Not for birthdays or holidays.

Not for lazy summer days or cold winter nights.

She made her life, not giving me a second thought. I was just a mistake she made when she was a teenager. Women of her caliber don’t waste time thinking of the past, too focused on enjoying their present and eagerly anticipating the bright future ahead.

I’m the fool who is stuck in the past.

Not her.

So why the fuck am I the one hiding here if she doesn’t give a fuck either way?

“What the fuck am I doing here?” I say out loud. “Fuck this.”

Not wanting to talk myself out of it, I grab my stuff and jump to the dock, racing all the way to my bike just so I don’t have time to second guess myself. Once I’m on the road, I floor it and ride like the wind, eager to get home. But as I drive up the driveway and see that my childhood home’s windows are pitch black, I realize that I waited too long.

Everyone is asleep.

Even her.

My heart sinks to the pit of my stomach, that familiar feeling of loss strangling my chest, making it hard for me to breathe.

“Snap the fuck out of it, you pussy,” I curse, revolted that I’m back there.

Back to when loss was all I knew. All that I would ever know.

Thankfully, it only takes me a few seconds to get a handle on the myriad of emotions I’m being bombarded with, but then again, I’m not surprised I’m able to recover so quickly. I’ve had loads of practice in burying shit down deep. So deep that not even my masochistic subconscious can find it.

With a drooped slope to my shoulders, I slowly wander my way behind the garage and walk the flight of stairs leading up to my loft. But just as I insert my key into the lock and twist it open, heat begins to crawl up my spine with the scent of cherry blossoms hitting my senses. Before I even flick the light switch on, I already know what I’m about to find.

No.

Not what, butwho.

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s rude to break into people’s homes…Sky?”

Her name rolls off the tip of my tongue, like a forbidden secret I was supposed to keep locked away in the dormant ridges of my heart. The sound of it flowing from my lips is so overpowering that it takes me a minute before I have the fortitude to turn around and face my uninvited guest.

But the minute I do, I know I’ve made a vital mistake.

Nothing and no one could have prepared me for this.

Prepared me for her.

They say time heals all wounds. That a heart, even if once broken, can be mended with time. Whoevertheyare have never faced this fucking gorgeous creature that is currently sitting on my bed before me now. If they did, they would see that no amount of time would ever be enough to diminish the hate imprinted in her steel glower.

In fuck-me heels that could pierce a dime-sized hole in any man’s chest, Sky crosses her long legs as she continues to eviscerate me with those stunning silver-plated eyes of hers. The sudden movement has my eyes drifting to her legs for a split second and onto the alluring sliver of skin of her outer thigh that her pencil skirt is unable to keep hidden. Though I’ve missed all the curves and valleys of her body, it’s her heart-shaped face that still haunts my dreams, hence why my stare eagerly returns to it. Her long chestnut hair is tightly bound into a sleek bun, purposely done to showcase her long slender neck, forcing my eyes to linger at its slope before landing on blood-red cupid’s bow lips. Her sharp high cheekbones and thin-slit gaze are determined to make her look menacing, but they fail their mission as that is not what I see when I look at her.

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