I had forgotten what it was like to live for the present. To embrace thenow.
To find beauty in a heartbeat. A sunset.
In roller-skating and old movies.
I had forgotten what it felt like to be a girl who loved a boy above everything else.
My heart cracked open and bled out on the floor.
It hurt.
I remembered that part.
The pain.
“I have never regretted leaving you that day under the bridge. Not for one second,” he said quietly, staring out the window. His breathing was labored but he held me tightly.
The ache overwhelmed me. Choking me. Swallowing me whole.
I’d die from the agony.
“What? How can you say that?” I rasped. He was killing me. Oh so slowly. With his words that shredded me apart.
“Because the boy I was then could never have gotten you here.” He looked around the room. “I was a mess. Hell, I’m still a fucking mess. I’m broken and used and thrown away. I’m dirty. From the inside out. I always knew I’d drag you down with me. I’m terrified I still will.” He clung to me. Desperate and terrified.
“I knew when you saw me that you and I could never be together. Not then. Not like that.” Yoss clung to me. His words coming out as a sob. Mournful and devastated.
“I shouldn’t have come looking for you. I should have known Manny did that on purpose. Sending me to find you.”
I had spent a lot of time thinking about it over the years. That moment that changed everything. Seeing Yoss on his knees. Being forced to face the person he was.
Manny had known what he was doing.
He set out to ruin Yoss and me. He had no intentions of letting Yoss go. I had been too young and naïve to know that then.
Hindsight was a bitch.
“Manny told you where I was?” Yoss asked in surprise. He never knew.
“He told me you had come to see him. That he gave you one more job. Manny even told me where you were. He wanted me to see—” I couldn’t finish. Not even after all this time. The memory burned my mind. Branding it with things I wish I could forget.
“Yet you still waited for me,” Yoss whispered.
I pulled away from him, staring up into his face. “How do you know I waited for you?”
Yoss sighed. A deep exhalation that told me everything.
“You saw me there. In the rain. Waiting for hours.” My throat tightened.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“Why did you do it? Why did you go to Manny?” I was so, so calm. I expected the anger. I expected the betrayal. But deep down I had expected his words. I had known in some small way the reasons behind his decision to leave.
So I listened to his words. I drank in the truth that had been denied for so long.
“Because I’m a guy who always makes mistakes. I can’t seem to help it. I can sit here and tell you my heart was in the right place. That I told myself it would be a one off to get some money to take care of you. That I just wanted to go into our new life with some sense of security. That I loved you so fucking much but I was terrified that I couldn’t keep you safe. Cared for. That I’d never be enough. I self-destructed. I lost you. And I felt as if I deserved that. That you were always a dream. One that I was lucky enough to hold onto for a little while.” His gaze moved to the window. “Then you became a memory. The kind that warms during dark nights and lonely days. You were my happy life. Even when you were living your own.”
“I’ve been full of a lot of regret, Yoss. It colored every part of the last fifteen years. But—” I shook my head. “I can’t hold onto it any longer. Not now.”
