SUNSHINE POURED INTO my room and, for the first time in months, it felt as though it was seeping into me as well. I'd always been affected by the weather, my day piggybacking the forecast, but lately, every sunrise left me in a gloomy fog. I’d been starting to wonder if I'd ever enjoy another kiss of the sun as it said good morning.
But today? Today, it made me feel alive. Warm.
I stretched my arms as high as they would reach and elongated my toes in the opposite direction, breathing a deep breath of air through my lungs. Although my heart was heavy, I was starting to feel stronger. My muscles were becoming more defined, even the one sitting inside my head. The one I always tried to keep numb. It fizzed and sizzled and made itself known a little more with each passing day. As each piece of my physique was called to play, being pushed beyond its limits in an attempt to strengthen, my brain was being fortified as well. I was building a mental rock. One that couldn't be fucked with. And then . . .
Then I was going to slam it down over that fucker’s skull.
Picturing Damon’s face sent a wave of adrenaline pumping through my veins. I leaped from the bed, making my way to the home gym Drew had put together. It served as my early morning workout on the days we didn’t go jogging together. Good thing for free financing or I would be eating a hefty load of ramen noodles.
This was one of the days I dreaded most. The day I would have to sit in class with Blake and pretend that my heart wasn’t pounding out of my chest the whole time. That my head was paying attention to the professor in the front of the room instead of twelve rows back where he sat. He hadn’t made any more advances since the unicorn note, and I hadn’t glanced behind me. Not once.
You have to try.
Shut up, Jace.
Even though he wasn’t here, I knew he had heard me.
I walked into English, steeling myself for the punch to the gut that I got every time I entered this class, but it never came.
For the last couple months, twice a week I would cover my face with my hair and keep my chin tucked to avoid looking to the back of the class where he undoubtedly sat. The fifty minutes I was forced to spend in that confining box was pure torture, feeling the heat of him searing me from behind, the soul-crushing guilt that I was hurting him plaguing me. You’ve never felt difficult until you’ve been put in a room with your soulmate, unable to acknowledge it.
And like every morning, I stopped at the very first desk in the front of the room. But this time I stared down at it. Noticing its confines. Somehow, even in this open room with a bunch of seats and people, it looked so secluded. A mockery of my existence.
Maybe I could blame the sun. Or the little bits of added strength I’d gathered. What came over me at that point, I couldn’t say for sure, but—
I looked up.
Finally.
Blue diamonds stared back at me with a cinch between them. I couldn’t stand how worried he looked. How pained.
I did that.
I was sick of me, too.
You have to try.
Logic moved aside at that moment. All I could concentrate on was how hard it had been without him by my side. How futile my efforts to grow without the biggest piece of life inside. I didn’t think about his new girl. I didn’t think about the pain. I thought about him. Only him. About the hands of comfort that I wanted to feel. The hands of comfort that I wanted to offer.
You have to try.
Grabbing my courage by the balls, I moved past that desk, then past the next, working my way to the back of the room. Blake straightened at my approach, his gulp visible. Without a word, I slipped into the seat beside him.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his leg bobbing to a hurried rhythm beneath the desk, his hand in a tight ball on top of it. With a calm hand, and confidence that I wasn’t exactly sure where it came from, I reached out and covered his fist. His body tensed. I looked over at my hand blanketing his tension, and all I could think about was bringing him some serenity again, easing his anxiety. I stroked my thumb along the outside of his fist, willing him to relax. To feel me. Slowly, the muscles began to lax. I could hear Blake’s breaths as I rubbed back and forth, soothing, reassuring.
We were going to be okay. We had to be.
He relented, opening his hand and turning it upside down. I slid mine along his before interlocking our fingers. I closed my eyes briefly, feeling the tracks of my lifelines matching up with his, knowing this was where I was meant to be, even if it hadn’t been the most direct road getting here. I needed to fix him, eradicate the grief I’d given him. Share mine with him so we could begin to heal. Together.
No words were spoken, we’d never needed them anyway. I knew the professor was speaking, but hell if I heard a word. All I could concentrate on was the feel of Blake’s skin. The warm moisture that was collecting between our palms, the evened-out breathing of our chests. The realization that, without speaking or looking at each other, that one point of contact was enough of a Valium to each of our pained hearts. An agonizing calmness. So close, yet worlds apart.
At the dismissal of class, we didn’t move. I simply stared at the clasp of our fingers, unable to bear the thought of losing that one small connection. I imagined he was feeling the same. Knowing one of us needed to make a move, I dragged my thumbnail along his palm, before giving his hand a squeeze and beginning to let go, but he tightened his grip which made me look over at him. Finally. He wasn’t looking at me, though. He was still staring down at our hands, grinding down on his teeth, a sort of manic expression on his face.
“What are you doing to me?” His voice was rough with ache.
Those words. All I could feel was the hurt in those words—both to me and to him.
They tunneled me back to the reality I chose to ignore at the start of class. To the fact that there was someone else in his life now and he’d finally moved on from me. To the fact that I had to protect him. From me.
What was I doing to him?
He was right.
If he’d finally found someone else, why would I step in the middle of that instead of allowing him to be happy?
Defeated, and second-guessing everything, I began to pull my hand away, but his grip cinched. I opened my mouth to apologize, to voice my heartache, my selfish need to be near him. But before I could get a word out, Blake was on his feet, and I was watching the hard lines of his back as he walked away from me.
A swift emptiness swooped in, leaving me hollow. After how patient he had always been, I’d never imagined he would really push me away. But everyone’s first instinct was self-preservation, I supposed. How many times could you break a person before they became unfixable? Before they gave up?
With a hole in my heart and an ache in my chest, realizing we were really over and he was gone, I exited the building. To my surprise, my gaze immediately landed on Blake's broad, slumped shoulders. Relief and tension rocked me simultaneously. Though light-years from what we were, the fact that he was there—waiting for me snuck a sliver of hope into my crumbling heart.
But then I noticed the torment laced in his posture. He was sitting on the steps with his legs parted wide, an elbow on each, and his head in his hands as though he were experiencing the worst migraine of his life. And maybe he was. Maybe I was just a constant headache to him. A nagging ache.
When I walked to the back of the classroom, it was to offer comfort, to ease some of his grief, not to make it worse. And it had backfired. Now, as I stood here, confusion swam inside not knowing what to do. What to say. The last thing I wanted was to cause him more pain, and maybe I should have walked away . . .
But I just couldn't.
Not when he was breaking.
I squatted behind him, my head swimming in a fog of having his aura so close. Unable to stay away, longing to ease his suffering, my trembling fingers reached out. But his back tensed, seeming to sense it. My hand paused, suspended in mid-air. Agony rolled from each of his exhales and I wasn’t sure if my touch would bring him comfort or hurt him worse. I was thankful the campus was quiet at the moment and that there wasn’t anyone around to witness our wreckage.
His fists knotted around his hair, and then he raked his fingers through the ends and turned, shooting a look over his shoulder at me. I’d never seen that look in his eyes before, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever forget it. Anguish laced with something bordering hatred dancing around a broken love. That was the only way I could describe it. That look slapped me across the face without ever touching me, and I abruptly rose to my feet, stumbling back to get away from it. Blake immediately stood as well, his fists in tight balls at his sides.
“Do you love me?” His eyes were wild, searching mine.
Not the words I was expecting.
I opened my mouth to respond but found my tongue immobile. How could he even question that? But before I could find the right words, he advanced up one step, his hateful expression slicing me open and I fumbled backward, feeling my heart trip in my chest.
“Can’t answer?” He cocked his head to the side, an unhinged sort of madness spiraling in his sapphire orbs. I had never seen him this way, and it stunned me, my brain unable to form an answer to that very simple question. To tell him just how much. All of the ways that I adored him. Missed him. Longed for him. All of the cries that I’d wept for him and the nights I hadn’t slept with worry for him.
He took another step, stole another beat of my heart.
“C’mon, Angel. It’s a simple question,” he scoffed, glitters dancing in his watery eyes. “Do. You. Love. Me?” he rasped.
More than air.
But the words didn’t come. Of course I loved him. I loved him with every molecule of my being, but I didn’t know if hearing that would make him feel better or worse. And I loved him enough to sacrifice my need for him if it meant he would be better in the long run. My brain was scrambling, trying to figure out the best approach, but he didn’t give me a chance.
“What are you doing to me?” His steely exterior began to flake away, his chest noticeably flying around his speeding heart. An unmasked pain etched every inch of his face, making him look older than his years. “You push me away. You shut me out. And yet you keep coming around, leaving your little drippings in my life just to be sure I can’t forget you.”
Two more steps.
My shoulder blades met the bricks behind me. There was nowhere else for me to go, my body as immobile as my tongue as he closed in.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his eyes grazing my features so roughly I could feel them scratch at the flesh of my face, imploring. Begging.
“I—”
The distraught look smeared across his face stopped me. Telling him how much I loved him would just be another selfish act on my part, and I had to put him first from now on. I owed him that much.
His frustration bubbled over his cracking exterior. With a growl, he eliminated the remaining space between us and came at me hard and fast, caging me against the brick wall. My chest heaved, the air I sucked in suffocating me.
“What the fuck are you trying to do to me?” he thundered, pain bleeding from each syllable. He fisted the shirt over his chest, twisting with a pull before banging on it. “I gave you every piece of me. All of it! And you fucking shredded me. I’m not your personal plaything, Evangelina. And now, you can’t even say the words?”
His face was so close, his nose practically touching mine as a wave of his scent crashed into me. A soapy, musky, manliness that mingled with his own personal sweetness. I remembered that smell as much as I remembered its taste. It took everything I had not to crumble into him, but it hit me then how badly he was crumbling, too.
“I miss you,” I whispered, the words floating out on their own. They brought with them a fear of rejection. But it was liberating to admit, even though they didn’t hold the weight of the words he was looking to hear.
“Humph.” The sarcastic grumble fell from his mouth. Blake pushed off the wall, allowing a gust of clean air to slap me in the face and I gasped, trying to take it in. He leveled his eyes at me, soaked in disappointment. “You wrecked me, girl.”
I could see the calm sweeping into him the way it does after a rush of adrenaline. For a split second, something flickered in his eyes making me wonder if the nostalgia of us was hitting him as much as me. Knowing how hard it always was for us to stay away from each other. We stayed locked for a second, or maybe an hour, but then he turned away from me, leaving me pressed against the brick. Alone.
Anxiety began to crawl up my neck, knowing that our moment was over. That he was leaving me and my mind grasped at straws, not knowing what to say. How to make him come back. Sorry that I didn’t say more.
I remembered the girl in the photo and all the reasons why this shouldn’t happen. I called out just before he got too far, “I hope she makes you happy,” and then my heart broke. Because as rancid as those words tasted, I knew that I had meant them.
Blake stopped in his tracks and shoved his hands in his pockets. Without turning around, he replied, “Yeah, well, someone has to.”
And then he walked away without another word, taking another beat of my heart with him—a slight thrum that he could slip into the pocket of his heart or throw into the trash. Whatever suited his fancy.
Either way, it no longer belonged to me.