Page 88 of The Girl I Once Loved

You have all my forevers, Sky.

All of them.

Please see that.

Please remember that.

She pulls away as if my touch physically pains her to bear for more than a few seconds.

“I can’t…I just…I can’t,” she stammers looking around the room and being bombarded by all the recent memories we made together. “I just can’t…I can’t be here right now.”

And with those cryptic words, she runs out the door, not even giving me a parting glance back.

Fuck.

She’s going to leave me.

Again.

She’s going to leave me and I’m at a loss of how I can stop her.

Like Sky earlier, I begin to pace my floor, tugging at my blond strands until I manage to pull a few out of their roots. When my gaze falls onto the empty ruffled bed, the same one that still smells of her, my heart more than reason pushes me out the door and has me running towards my childhood home. On featherlight feet, I quickly walk through the house, up the stairs, and down the hallway that leads to her bedroom. I let out a relieved exhale when I find her door open, and slide into the darkness of her room, Sky’s soft whimpered sobs splintering my heart in two as I lock the door behind me.

I wait for her to tell me to leave.

To demand I leave her alone.

But when she remains completely silent to my presence, I walk over to the empty spot in her bed and slide in against her.

“Noah—” she begins to protest as I wrap my arms around her and pull her head to nestle in my chest.

“No, Sky. If you need to hate me, then go for it. Hate me with all your heart. Curse my name and my very existence if you need to. But I’m staying right here. You need to know that I’ll never abandon you. Through the good times and the bad, I’ll be right here. Loving you. Always.”

As if my words were exactly what she needed to hear, she lets go and feels every ounce of her suffering and pain, making sure I bear witness to all of it.

She cries until there are no more tears in her to shed.

She curses me out, until her voice is too weak to utter another word.

She hates me with every breath in her being, until hate becomes too heavy a burden for her to carry alone.

And all the while, I hold onto her, as she falls apart in my embrace.

I tell her that I love her, even as I cry for what could have been.

I tell her that I’ll never stop loving her, even when the future still remains unclear.

And as her pain takes its toll and lulls her to sleep in my arms, I promise never to let her go again.

That I will keep her heart safe even at the risk of mine.

Chapter Twenty-One

Skylar

Ilay in bed, cocooned in darkness, my eyes fixed on the wall as if it holds all the answers to the questions that have plagued me for years. It's a cold and unforgiving space, just like the void that's taken up residence within my chest.

Seven years. Seven long, agonizing years of heartache and pain. Seven years of believing the worst about the man I loved, the man who had once been my everything.

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