If there was one thing I was certain of as I stepped back into that coffee shop, it was that I had no idea what I was doing or what I was about to say. I didn’t feel strong enough to get a grip on the door handle at first, and my knees shook with such fear, uncertainty and frustration that I wasn’t sure whether or not I would make it across to where Alex was sitting.

I moved like there was a haunting lullaby playing all around me and I was only allowed to take a step every time the song reached a new peak. The ends of my hair hung limp as I stared down at the floor, shielding the ghostly look in my eyes and the nervous blush on my cheeks. When I eventually reached him and forced myself to look up at his face again, everything I feared I would feel slammed straight into my chest.

The ache was agonising. It hurt. It hurt so much, all I could do for some time was stare at him as I tried not to scrunch my face up in pain, and I wondered what he saw when he looked at me in that moment. I wondered if he saw the same girl from years ago, or if he saw somebody new entirely.

However he did see me, though, those hazel beacons shone brightly, inviting me in. The strength of his jaw as it ticked, the lines on his cheekbones, the unshaven scruff that darkened the bottom of his face, they were all there, all together, all culminating to create that one masterpiece that was so uniquely him.

That beautiful first love of mine.

God, I wanted to punch him.

I wanted to reach out, slap his face and scream. I wanted to release the suppressed anger that was bubbling away inside of me and pour it down onto his innocent looking face. I wanted to make him pay for all my pain, and I wanted to pretend I hadn’t heard anything his father had said in that hospital. I wanted to tell him he wasn’t welcome around here anymore, as though I owned the damn town and all the people in it. I was the Sheriff of my own heart, and I wanted him gone.

But there was another truth that hit me as I looked at him– a truth that I didn’t have the fight to resist anymore – and that was: I’d never wanted Alex so much in my whole, entire life.

Pulling out the chair opposite him, I slid into the seat, never taking my eyes away from his as I clasped my hands together, resting them on the table in front of us.

Then I stared and waited for him to break.

“I swear, I didn’t know you would be here today,” he finally spoke.

I only blinked when I had to, trying hard to put on a face of indifference while my heart was leaping around like a newborn puppy and my head was playing heavy metal to drown out all the confusion going on in my body.

“Say something, please.”

“There’s nothing to say. We said everything we needed to the other day. We said too much.”

“I saw you running in the hospital,” he muttered. “I saw you running away like…”

“Like I had someplace else to be?”

“No.” He shook his head, his own defiance taking over his face as he regained some control. “You ran away like you’d seen or heard something that scared you.”

He still loves you now.

“When you’re around, Alex, I’m always seeing and hearing something that scares me. I’ve already admitted that. What more do you want from me? A confession written in my blood?”

Alex dipped his head before he looked back up, struggling to control the smirk that was trying to break free. “A little dramatic, don’t you think?”

I coughed politely to clear my throat. “I suppose I should ask how your dad is doing.”

“He’s alive, for now.”

I inhaled slowly, exhaling as quietly as I could without making it sound like an exasperated sigh. “You don’t sound too worried about his future.”

“Worrying gets me nowhere and leaves me with nothing but a headache for my trouble.”

“You learned that from personal experience?”

Alex pressed his lips together, quickly glancing down at the table again before he leaned closer and copied my pose, bringing his hands in front of him and entwining his fingers. Then, in a viper-like move, he looked up at me through his eyelashes, and I was taken back to that night when he laid on top of me. That night I found everything and lost it all at once. He had witchcraft in those eyes of his, and I was and always had been too weak to resist his spell.

“Are you going to sit here and talk to me like we’re in an interview all afternoon, Nat, or will you eventually loosen up and realise this is just me in front of you?”

“Excuse me?” I said, tilting my head and raising a brow.

“Just cut the façade, okay? I don’t like it. It makes you cold. That’s not who you are and you’re crap at acting.”

My eyes narrowed as I watched him, and I hated that someone I hadn’t seen for so long had no problem picking up where he left off, seeing right into the very heart of who I was.

“I don’t know how to be around you.”

“You were nice at the hospital.” He smiled that crooked smile of his again, and I had to gulp down to try and stay focused. “You were friendly. You held me, and you showed me you cared. Had I not seen that before now, maybe I would believe that this version of you is real.”

“I was being polite. That’s all.”

“No. You were being you. The Natalie I’ve always known. You shouldn’t ever want to be anyone else but her. She’s incredible.”

The blush rose to my cheeks instantly, waving its little red pompom army in Alex’s face to give him a small victory dance. I hated it, yet I loved it. I was a walking, talking mess. Everything in me was screaming at me to get up and leave yet everything was also begging me to stay.

“That version of Natalie scares you, though, doesn’t she? She’s the one that you don’t trust around me.”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Because she might still love me?” he dared himself to ask, the thrill of the jump he’d just made lighting up his eyes as hope washed over him.

“Because she probably never stopped,” I found myself confessing.

Alex’s eyes searched mine once again, and I wondered what he looked for when he studied them that way.

“Do you want to know a secret?” he asked quietly as he leaned in closer. My body wanted to move forward, but I fought to keep it in place, the strain of my resistance weighing so heavily on every muscle I owned, it was like I was trying to hold a truck in the air with a single hand.

“I don’t know. Do I?”

“I think so.”

“Go on…”

“It's long-winded.”

“I have time.”

He smiled. “I saw a girl once, a girl with no life in her eyes. We were young at the time, the two of us.”

He paused and I breathed out slowly, scared of what secrets were about to pour out of his heart.

“She was walking down the street with an army of other girls in front of her, her blonde hair hanging down so she could try and hide behind it, her cheeks rosy from the cold.” Alex shuffled his shoulders, sucked in a breath and made sure he was looking straight into my eyes as he spoke. “The moment I saw her, I felt this weird sensation in my chest. I didn’t know what it was at first. I thought I might have just eaten something funny, or maybe I was getting that heartburn thing my mum always said she got. I didn’t know for sure, but every time I looked away from this girl, that pain and that tightness disappeared. One look at her and I couldn’t breathe. It was like I just forgot how. The night wore on, and while everyone else joked and laughed and sang songs in the street, this girl and I hung back from the group. She didn’t see me, though. She was too busy staring at her own feet, or pretending to smile at all the right times and laugh softly in all the right places. Every time I looked up and took a glance at her, I got that pain again. I got a numb feeling in my hands and a dizzy feeling in my head. Fuck, she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and she had no idea how much she shone for me.

“I kept trying to catch her looking at me, but she never did. She didn’t look up much at all. That’s when I knew I had to see her eyes before I went home that night, and I thought I had all the time in the world. Only she suddenly held herself back, told her friend she was leaving, and that damn pain in my chest got tighter. She was going to leave me and I couldn’t let it happen. The ache got so bad, it pushed me forward until I was running at this girl like she was the only one who could give me oxygen to breathe properly again, even though it seemed she was the reason I was struggling in the first place.” Alex paused, closing his eyes as he took in another slow breath. His smile broke free, and I allowed myself to bite down on my lip as though the taste of him might still linger there.

“I told her I could walk her home, that I knew where she lived when I didn’t. I told her I would make sure she was safe, when the truth was, I’d never before wanted to pick someone up, run away with them over my shoulder and find a place to keep them to myself for the rest of my life. I knew then what I wanted. I wanted that girl – the one who had no idea how beautiful she was. I wanted the girl who had so much sadness in her heart, I felt like I would give up everything I’d ever stood for just to see her smile again.” Alex opened his eyes slowly, dropping his gaze to my lips as though he, too, was relishing in those memories and those long forgotten tastes of his own. “When she smiled,” he began in a whisper, “when I saw her staring back at me the way I was staring at her, I felt like I’d won some kind of lottery, but that pain in my chest just got worse and worse and worse. Then we heard her mother’s voice and that pain turned into pure panic.”

“Alex,” I interrupted him quietly, not sure I wanted to relive the next part of that night.

“That’s when my life changed completely,” he said matter-of-factly, all humour and light dropping from his face. “I saw why she was sad. I saw that there was no easy fix, no way I could save her. I saw that, like me, this girl was done for, for life. Her pain was engraved too deep. There would be no going back for her once that night was over. She was grieving for a love she’d lost while I grieved daily for a love I’d never had from my father. I knew we could never work as I watched her say goodbye to her sister. I wasn’t strong enough to help her heal, and a little piece of me I’d only just discovered died that night, too. I had no idea how or why I got in that room. I had no memory of anything other than knowing I had to see she was safe. I watched as her sister said goodbye to her, and I watched the way they said I love you without really having to say it at all. I knew I shouldn't have been there, but I felt like I was there for a reason. I was meant to see that kind of love at least once in my life and know that it was possible, that it was real.”

I swallowed harshly as two tears fell from my eyes, my face unmoving as I stared at him like he was still that fifteen-year-old boy in the doorway of my dying sister’s bedroom.

“That was the first time I told the girl I loved her,” he admitted. “But she didn't know it. That was the first night I had spoken to her. It was the first time I had looked into her eyes and felt that stabbing pain in my chest. It was the first time I relied on her for the air in my lungs, and it was the first time I ever mouthed ‘I love you’ behind her back, because I knew what I felt. I knew what was real. I knew then what she meant to me. But I also knew that no matter how much I tried to persuade her that I could make her happy, after that night, there was no way I could truly make her happy at all. Not when I was so fucked up and broken, too.”

“You told her you loved her that night?” I mouthed, almost too quietly for him to hear as tears continued to drip down over the curve of my top lip.

“And every night after that,” he admitted. “I just didn’t say it loud enough for her to hear, and I always said it when she wasn’t looking, or when she was falling asleep as a platonic friend in my arms while lying on her bed. I told her when she walked in front of me, or when she was busy play fighting with me as we rolled on our backs in the park. I always told her. I just never told you.”

The pain on my face was obvious to us both. I was no longer in control of the way it scrunched together to fight off everything I was feeling that I wasn’t supposed to be feeling. I was no longer in control of the way my head bowed or the way my tears fell silently onto the tabletop in the small coffee shop where we sat.

“I love you, Nat,” he finally whispered, his body swaying from side to side as he waited for me to look back up at him.

When I did, he pressed his mouth together, and a sad, downturned smile took over his face before he turned his palms face up and shook his head at his own stupidity.

“I love you. I always have. The rest is just a history book full of youthful mistakes, cowardly actions and misread signs. I never claimed to be a hero. I’m not some billionaire that can sweep you off your feet. I’m not dark, dangerous, or mysterious. I’m not even all that funny, and I couldn’t ever be that guy that would promise not to let you down. All I am is a man – a man from a messed up family in a screwed up situation. All I am is human. But I have always, always loved you with every single piece of who I am, and everything I’ve ever done, I swear it was only because I thought it was the right thing to do at the time.”

“Are you trying to hurt me?” I croaked.

“I'm just trying to tell you the truth for once. Nothing held back.”

“Why now?”

“Because it's only since I came back that I've come to realise that you really didn't know what I felt for you. I always thought you knew that I loved you.”

“If I'd have known you wanted me, I'd have waited. Christ, I would have waited if I'd known there was something there. I wish you had been brave enough to tell me when I needed to hear it the most,” I told him. “Now? Now all this is just a sad story for you to tell me that makes me cry and ache in all the wrong ways, Alex. Our time together back then is one of those moments in life that we will always regret because we didn’t try, not because we tried and failed. Those kinds of stories, they’re the ones that kill us from the inside out. They’re the ones we’ll think about until the day we die. That’s what regret does. It burns under the skin. It taunts you with the possibilities you turned down, and in the end, there’s nothing we can do to get rid of that. Nothing we can do at all.”

“Nothing?”

“What do you want from me?”

“I don't know.”

“Then nothing has changed.”

“Except us. We've changed. You, you're harder, a little more broken because of me. And I'm all bitter, twisted and completely fucked up, torn between fighting for you until I make you mine or letting you live in another man's arms forever, because I know he will always make you happy.”

“You can't say things like that to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because everything hurts again when you do.”

“Everything hurts for me no matter which way I go, Nat.”

We stared at each other for a long time after that, and I had all these mixed up thoughts whizzing around in my mind, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out a way to string a coherent sentence together.

“Do you want me to go?” he eventually asked.

“It would be easier,” I whispered.

Alex's knowing grin broke free, and when his eyes fell to my smile again, I knew I was done for.

“Do you want me to go?” he repeated.

“No.”