“I know I don’t have any right to come bursting into your life like this. But I needed to do this to feel complete again.”
I pulled up a smile from somewhere deep inside myself, while hestood there motionless, his fists clenched, his eyes full of pain that I had caused.
Sora took a few steps.
“Trey,” she whispered, with something urgent in her tone. I think she wanted him to react.
I felt small and lost. But also brave, for the first time, because I’d opened myself up without reservation. And sad, too, because the ending I’d been so scared of was now written. And evidently, it wasn’t a happy one.
I turned around and walked away.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. That it was hard to admit that he hadn’t followed me. That I didn’t hear the echo of my name in the air or feel a hand on my wrist holding me back.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt to realize that I’d been talking about anus, but all that was left was anI.
I lost it. The tears came out so hard and fast that I couldn’t see.
Period.
Sometimes love crosses your path, awakens you, and then it goes. Whether you want it to or not. And there’s no one to blame, except maybe your own stupidity.
“Can’t you just make the right decision for once without making every single wrong one first?”
His voice stopped me, and I turned. He was looking at me with a face that was part-anguished, part-infuriated.
“What’s the right decision?”
“Staying here.”
I took a step toward him, he took a step toward me, and we were drawn together like two magnets.
“You want me to stay?”
He nodded, smirking, just barely, but that was all I needed to come back to life.
“You were just standing there, though, immobile, not saying anything, and I thought you didn’t care, and…”
He interrupted me. “You needed to say all those things, and I needed to hear them. I needed to know that you had missed me, too. That you still love me, that your life had been terrible without me, too.”
I approached him slowly. “I’m sorry.”
“Why’d it take you so long?”
I didn’t even know myself, but I tried to tell him, stumbling over my words. “I thought I was doing the right thing at first. The best thing for everyone. And when I realized I’d screwed up, it was too late, and I didn’t know how to fix it. You said you’d never come back, that you couldn’t just keep coming and going while I waited forever to figure things out. You were gone, and I didn’t have the right to come looking for you.”
His hands cupped my face, and he kissed me. And the tears that emerged from me now were tears of relief. Of joy. I could feel his heart beating against my chest. How I’d missed him. But then something occurred to me.
“Wait,” I whispered, pulling away. “This isn’t right. Not like this. You…you’re with that girl. This isn’t fair for her. And it isn’t fair to me, either.”
Trey looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Then he understood and laughed. What the hell was he laughing about?
“Are you talking about Sora? Harper, Sora and I are nothing.”
“I saw you together, though.”
“Sora’s family. Her mother and my mother were cousins. We met a few months ago, when she moved to Lennox Island. She’s a lawyer. She’s been helping me out with the legal aspects of my project. That’s all.”
“But she…”
