Page 87 of The Girl I Once Loved

“No.”

The loud scoff she lets out feels like tiny paper cuts slung at my soul.

“You really are something,” she says, nostrils flaring. “I thought for sure you’d deny it. That maybe you’d even try to defend your actions. But here you are. Head held high like it doesn’t affect you in any way.”

“You want the truth, then I’ll give it to you, Sky. All you need to do is ask. But don’t assume you know how I’m feeling right now. You have no idea,” I tell her in earnest.

“Fine.” She throws her hands up in the air. “Tell me then. I want to hear it from your mouth how you viciously set out to destroy me. How you planned and plotted the perfect way to hurt me. How you made sure that, because of you, I’d never have a normal relationship again. Because of you, I’m damaged goods now, unable to open myself up to love even when it was within my very grasp. Because in the back of my mind, I could never truly trust my instincts since they had so miserably failed me with you.”

With two large strides, I eat the distance between us, making Sky have to take two steps back to keep me at arm’s length. I bite into my cheek but make no move to get closer.

“If you’re referring to that goodie two-shoes of a boyfriend, Gael, then you know as well as I do, that I’m not the reason you were never able to fall in love with him. You can’t give your heart to someone when it already belongs to someone else.”

I try not to flinch with the way she stares daggers into me. Her rage is so evidently clear, it’s all I’m able to cope with right now, placing my own suffering on the back burner.

“I’ll tell you all that you want to know, if you answer me this one question. Why did you lie to me about Dartmouth? Why did you let us all believe that they turned you down? Answer me that, Sky? You want the truth, then by God, I’ll give it to you. Just know you can’t lie to me either.”

Sky takes another few steps back, turning her head to the side so she doesn’t have to confront her part in her own tragic past.

“No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to use my actions to defend yours. No.” She shakes her head, her entire body trembling with rage and grief.

“Fuck, Sky. This is it. This is the moment where we can be honest for once. Don’t hide from this. Let’s confront it. Together. That’s the only way we’re going to make it.”

“Make it?! Make it?!” she repeats, wide-eyed and astounded. “Do you honestly believe we can recover from this? That there is even anusto save?”

“Yes!” I shout out just as ardently. “Because we’re no longer those scared kids we used to be. Because we’ve learned from our mistakes. Because we deserve some fucking happiness in our lives after all the shit we went through.”

Sky grows eerily quiet, her silent tears the only testament to her pain.

“Just tell me what you need me to do? Do you want me to grovel? I’ll do that and more if I have to. Do you want me to say I’m sorry, then yes, I’m fucking sorry how I went about it. I wish I had found another way back then to force you to take that grant and follow your dreams. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. But don’t stand there with accusation in your eyes when all I tried to do was give you a better future. A future I could never give you in a million years, even if I wanted to.”

“You took my choice away,” she quickly retorts. “I’ll never forgive you for that.”

“But that’s where you’re wrong. You see it as a choice, when in reality, there wasn’t much of one. Tell me. What was I supposed to do, Sky? Would you rather I’d have been a selfish prick and kept you in this dead end of an island? Would you have rather given up on all your dreams to stay with me? Could you have loved me through that, or would you eventually fall out of love with me, resenting me for all the paths you didn’t take? You think I stole your choice? Fuck, Sky. What choice did I have?”

“I loved you!” she shouts. “And you broke us!”

“No! Don’t you dare fucking do that. Don’t you dare come here demanding the truth from me only to lie to my face,” I exclaim with steel resolve. “Don’t say you loved me when we both know you still do. Don’t say that the feelings you had for me are in the past when I can fucking taste how your love for me still lingers on your lips. Don’t say youlovedme, Sky, when I never fucking stopped loving you. Don’t…please just don’t,” I start to plead, manic. “Just tell me the truth. Just say what we have been skirting around all this time, pretending not to see it since the minute you came back to me. Just say that you love me. Because I fucking can’t stop being in love with you. I’ll never stop, Sky. Never.”

The sight of every tear streaking down her face feels like a slow torturous death.

Ever so slowly, I walk over to where she is currently frozen on the spot, needing to be near her as humanly possible, as I bleed at her feet and pour my heart and soul out to her.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Sky. Believe me, the last thing I ever wanted to do was give you pain. But I didn’t know how I could save us and still make sure you followed your dreams. I didn’t know. I was an eighteen-year-old messed up kid who found his fucking soulmate in his stepsister and had no idea how best to love her. I thought if I did this one unselfish act that I would be okay with loving you from afar. That I’d be just fine. But I wasn’t. I’ve never been fine, Sky. You say I broke us that night…that I broke you… well, I died that night. You, being back here, is the first time I’ve been alive in years. Please, don’t let the pain of our past damage the future we can still have together. Please.”

I’m begging.

I’m fucking begging.

And I’ll beg every day of my pathetic life if I have to.

Because without her, my life has no meaning.

Without her, I’m nothing.

I’ve been nothing for the past seven years, and like hell I’ll go back to that without putting up a fight.

“Look at me,” I plead, inching close enough to softly slip my palm to her face and caress her cheek. “This is it, little stalker. This is where we need to be. I’m all in. Every part of my heart is yours and will always and forever be yours. Now you have to make a decision. Do you want the past to dictate our future, or will you be brave enough to take this leap with me? To be in this with me. You accused me of taking your choice away, well, here you have it back. You alone have the power to command how we go from here. You know where my heart is at. If I could, I’d cut the damn thing out of my chest and give it to you. Because it’s yours. It will always be yours.”

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