hannah
Present day
Day 72
I killed the engine and flicked down the kickstand. I yanked the helmet off my head and let my now longer-than-ever hair fall free around my shoulders.
This place was so beautiful at night.
I stopped for a moment to glance out at the moonlight glistening on the ocean.
I yawned loudly, all this sun and salt air was really taking it out of me.
That, and the fact that Jasper had been quiet lately. He didn’t text me every day anymore and the messages he did leave made it clear he was drunk.
I’d started reading to fill in the time and to help me sleep. It wasn’t any where as good as having the real thing, but book boyfriends had become my new reality.
I had a saucy romance novel waiting on my nightstand, and I grinned thinking about all the filthy things that Hunter ‘Lucky’ Casarazzi had said to Hope Carter in the pages I’d fallen asleep reading last night.
I was just about to head in and get back to it when I felt eyes on me.
I knew it wasn’t rational to think that I could actually feel someone’s eyes on me – but it was more that maybe all of my senses were coming together to tell me that I wasn’t alone.
I should have been alone.
Nobody else lived up here.
It couldn’t have been Jasper, I would have seen something, anything, in his search history if he had figured out where I was… but my heart still raced at the possibility.
He could have figured it out and got on the next plane, not even bothering to search for a single thing…
It could be him…
I spun around and could just make out a silhouette of a figure leaning in the doorway.
It was a male – that was for sure.
“Hello?” I called out, my voice a mixture of terror and hope. “Who’s there?”
“You gonna make me wait out here all night or what?” the familiar male voice replied.
I gasped.
* * *
“Tyler, what the fuck?!” I demanded as I flicked on the light switch and shut the door behind him. “What the hell are you doing out here?”
He picked up a framed photo of me as a little girl at the beach in my swimsuit from the shelf in the living area and smiled. “Cute.”
“Ty…” I warned him as I threw my helmet down onto the chair.
He sat the frame down and sighed, but still didn’t make eye contact.
“He hasn’t found you.”
I shrugged. “Not yet.”
“It’s been two and a half months, Hannah.”
“I know.” I sat down on the couch and watched him as he wandered around the room, picking up frames as he went, I was aware that the only ones he touched were the ones that contained pictures of me, but what I couldn’t figure out was how he could pick me out amongst all my cousins.
He still hadn’t made proper eye contact and it was becoming increasingly obvious that he had something he wanted to say to me.
“Ty, why are you here?” I tilted my head to the side in question. “I can tell something’s up.”
His hand lingered over a photo of me and my grandmother – the last photo we’d ever had taken together. “I just wanted to check on you.”
I knew that wasn’t it. He could have just called me if he wanted to check in. There was no need for him to spend hours driving or flying here.
There’s something else.
“You look a lot like her. You two have the same nose and the same sparkle in your eye.”
I looked across the room and even though I couldn’t see the photo from where I sat, I could picture it perfectly in my head.
He was right. I looked a lot like she did when she was my age.
“Thank you,” I replied simply.
“Princess, he hasn’t found you.” He finally turned to face me.
“I’m in no hurry.” I shrugged, the lie rolling off my tongue.
He approached me slowly, like he was… nervous…
Scared maybe?
This wasn’t the cocky, self-assured Tyler that I was used to bantering with. This was someone else entirely and it gave me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“I debated long and hard about coming here, I really did…” He sat down next to me on the couch and tilted his body so he was facing me.
I mimicked his position so I could look at him too. He clearly had something to say and I desperately wanted to know what it was.
“Tyler, what’s going on? Is something wrong at home?”
He shook his head quickly.
“Ty—”
“But,” he continued, interrupting me, “I figured if I didn’t come now then I never would, and then I’d never know what might have been said.”
He looked pained. It was the strangest thing to watch – it was almost as though the words he was speaking were causing him hurt… as though he knew they were a bad idea but he was going to make them come out, regardless.
“Tyler, what is it?” I reached for his hand and held it in mine.
His gaze travelled to our joined hands and he sighed. “I already know how this goes, Hannah, and that’s the worst fucking part about it, but I still have to say what I came here to say.”
“Just say it already, you know me, you know I hate surprises.”
“I’ve got feelings for you,” he blurted out. “I have for years. I thought I was over it, but seeing you again, I realised I’m not... I know I should have told you way back when I might have actually had a shot, but I was too chicken-shit, and you were right – I hide behind my keyboard… but I don’t want to hide anymore. And I know I’m too late, but I’m here and he’s not. You trusted me and not him… so I figured it was worth a shot.”
Oh my god.
I clasped my chest with my free hand, pain ricocheting through my body as I listened to him pour his heart out.
All for nothing…
My heart was well and truly claimed. It was owned… branded… possessed by a rock star with a beard and a mop of blond hair.
There was no coming back from that for me.
I’d read about it in books where a character would declare that they had been ruined for all others to come, and that’s how it was for me.
There would be no others. Not now, not ever.
Tyler squeezed my hand lightly as he carried on. “I know you’re with Jasper now… if he turns up I guess…” He sighed. “You know, princess, it would have never taken me this long to find you.”
I gave him a sad smile. He was right, but it wasn’t Jasper’s fault that his talents were singing and playing rather than being a cyber genius.
The two couldn’t be pitted against each other in that respect – if it weren’t for Ty being on board with my plan, I was certain that Jasper would have been able to find me within a week – if not less.
I stared at our hands and tried to breathe deep and long.
“I guess I can’t really blame the guy, I’ve made it near impossible for him…” He rubbed his free hand over his eyes in what appeared to be frustration. “I don’t even know where I’m going with this. I just wanted you to know that you had options… you could come home with me now, Hannah. I could make you happy, we could be happy together.”
He gripped my hand a little tighter and I looked up at him, his eyes were pleading for me to hear him.
But I couldn’t.
I knew there was truth in his words. If I was honest with myself, I too had felt something for my best friend’s big brother once.
It had probably been nothing more than a crush, but I could see it…I could see what he had pictured in his head.
If Lotte and I hadn’t gone to that club two years ago… if Parker had never set his sights on her, if I’d never met Jasper… maybe there could have been something between Tyler and I.
In a different place at a different time.
But I had gone to that club that eventful night. I’d met Jasper and my whole world had been tipped on its head.
This wasn’t a different place at a different time.
This is here and now.
My life had been irrevocably altered when Jasper had walked his light into it, and there was nothing and no one that could change that for me now.
Only him.
“Tyler…” I choked out.
His face was a mask of pain and disappointment, and I realised that my expression was telling the story for me.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I hate that you feel this way when I can’t return your affection.”
He shook his head quickly. “No, please don’t feel bad…. I knew coming here, that it wasn’t going to go my way, but I still needed to try. I couldn’t leave it as a ‘what if’. There’s too many of those in my life and I didn’t want you to be another one.”
We sat in silence for a moment.
I squeezed his hand lightly. “I can see it, you know… I know I could have had a good life with you.”
He smiled back at me – not in a hopeful way, but as though he was happy that I could share his vision – as unattainable as it may have been.
“You’ve always been so good to me, Tyler, and I love you – I do. But it wouldn’t be enough. I know what love should be like now, how it grows and grows. He’s my whole life, Tyler. Every part of me is so intertwined with every part of him now that I can hardly remember what it was like before he came along.”
He opened his mouth to speak and I stopped him, already having guessed what he was going to say.
“Don’t get me wrong, because I know you’re about to lecture me for losing myself in a man, but it’s not like that… it’s like I’ve found myself through him. He brings out the best in me – or the worst, depending on who’s telling the story, but that’s the thing... he wants me to be me, no matter what that means. No matter if I’m crazy, or wild, or emotional… he wants to see it all – and at the end of it, he not only still loves me, but he loves me even more.”
He really is an incredible man.
He sighed in defeat. “I’m really happy you have him.”
I snorted. “Are you?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I am. I’d never deny you happiness, Hannah. You deserve to be loved for the incredible woman you are.” He squeezed my hand before letting it go and getting to his feet.
“You don’t have to go…”
“We both know I do.”
I’d never felt so horrible in my entire life. I knew it wasn’t exactly my fault, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like I was crushing someone I loved.
“Ty…”
“I’ll be fine, I swear, Han. It’s not like I ever had you, ya know? But I guess in a way it still feels like I lost something.”
“I never want to lose you from my life, Tyler.”
He shot me a cocky grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m like AIDs; you couldn’t get rid of me if you tried, princess.”
I knew he was hurting right now, but his smartass comment made me think that everything would eventually be okay between us again.
“I do have one question…”
“Shoot.”
“If you feel that way about him, and you know what the two of you have is real… then what are you doing here?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but snapped it shut again when no words came out.
Truth was, I didn’t have a good answer for that question.
“I… I guess… I think I just needed to be sure.”
His hand turned the handle. “You know, Hannah, you’re worth it, you know that? You deserve to be happy… and I think the sooner you stop tiptoeing around like the ground is going to fall out from underneath you, the better.”
Long after he’d gone I was still sitting there, thinking about the words he’d spoken, and the words I’d spoken too.
“He wants me to be me, no matter what that means. No matter if I’m crazy, or wild, or emotional… he wants to see it all – and at the end of it, he not only still loves me, but he loves me even more.”
I couldn’t have been more truthful, but it did beg the question, why was I here?