She stands in front of me in a posture of defeat.
“Is that all?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“Are you not upset that you’re giving up on me?”
“On our pact?”
“On us, Kaya, or am I the only one who felt that this was something beyond a torrid escape on a Caribbean island?”
My deep sadness is morphing into indignation. Why won’t she fight for herself? Why won’t she fight for me? I’d been so sure that we could make it work. I was just giving her time to arrive at the same conclusion. But time’s up.
“I’m sorry,” is all she offers me and as she walks away, I know that it’s really over. I will never be able to forget the pain of losing her if I don’t do something.
I run after her and grab her hand, squeezing it tightly. “Wait.”
She looks up at me, her beautiful brown orbs filled with sadness. “We have to stop this before anyone else gets hurt,” she says softly.
I know that she’s right, but a part of my heart still rages on and refuses to believe that this is the end of our journey together.
Desperate to hold on to her, I wrap my hand around the back of her neck and pull her into me.
“I love you, Kaya. I want us to figure out a way to be together.”
Before she can deny me, I cover her mouth with mine. My lips move against hers, tasting her. I kiss her with all the longing and fear that I had been feeling, conveying all of my emotions without words. I feel her hands rest on my chest as she kisses me back, and while I know this might not be the answer, I cling to the hope that it could be. That somehow, someway, we can make this work.
We break apart, both breathing heavily. Kaya’s eyes search mine for an answer that neither of us can find. We stay like that for what feels like an eternity, connected in a way neither of us can explain. Finally, Kaya takes a step back and shakes her head sadly.
“Are you just reckless or heartless?” she questions as she traces her bottom lip with her fingers.
“I kissed you because… I needed to.”
“I wish things were different,” she whispers brokenly before turning and walking away from me in the sand.
I watch her go until she disappears from sight, knowing it was too good to be true to think we would get our happy ending after all. With a heavy heart, I turn and begin walking into the water.
As the waves swallow my feet, then my ankles, I can’t help but feel a tremendous sense of loss. I feel like I’d been so close to getting everything I want, but I realize now, I was being greedy. I’m lucky to have made it out of my neighborhood and into the NFL. Everything else I receive from this world is just icing on the cake.
I turn around and take one last look at Kaya, trying to commit her image to memory forever. Then I take a deep breath and fall back into the waves to cleanse myself of the last few weeks.
Tomorrow I’ll get on a flight to New York and return my focus back to where it belongs.
Football.
Kaya
Sitting alonein the darkness of my bedroom, tears stream down my cheeks, because all I can seem to think about since we’ve returned from the island are the moments I’ve shared with Brick.
I dwell on the days when he first returned home, the way he looked at me like I was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen with those magical hazel eyes of his. I remember the hours we spent talking and getting to know one another again, and the way our conversations felt playful and easy, like no time had passed at all.
Skimming my fingertips across my exposed skin, I remember the way his firm hands possessively held me close as we made love and how alive it made me feel.
Now, all I feel is a heaviness on my chest as I’m curled into the fetal position on an empty bed in the basement of my mother’s house, wondering how I let things get so out of hand. How did I end up here?
