Theo
Ikeep thinking it will hurt less, but it doesn’t. I still come back here every day though. This is where I want to stay forever, here in Neverland.
So I can always be connected to him.
And when the day comes where I can’t fight it anymore, this is where I’ll do it.
I’ll lie down on this very spot where I gave him my heart and let it stop beating.
Not now.
But someday.
Chapter 13
Dawson
Icursed as I hit another sour chord on my keyboard. I had been going at it for almost two hours and it sounded progressively like I was having a stroke. Even when I was keyed up about something it was unusual for me to mess up like this. A soft whine drew my attention to the bed where Penny was curled up next to my pillow.
“Yeah yeah, I know. I suck,” I grumbled. She merely yawned and dropped her head back down lazily in response.
I dialed it back and began Für Elise instead, a return to form. I mastered it when I was five. No one would believe me of course because once again, I fumbled my fingers so much that I slammed my hands down on the keys repeatedly like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Penny jumped up at the noise and darted out the door.
Everyone’s a critic…
“Woah. Who pissed in your cornflakes, Beethoven?” Dani leaned against my doorframe, slurping down a bowl of cereal at three in the afternoon.
“Gross,” I griped. “And no one. I’m just having an off day.”
That was an understatement. I almost regretted my decision to stay the remaining two weeks before returning to school forfootball practice. Mom and Dad had been so excited for some “family time” before Dani and I went back to school that I hadn’t had the heart to turn them down.
Hah! Yeah fucking right, Hayes. Whatever you need to tell yourself.
“Hmm, right. And this would have nothing at all to do with the hunky boy next door who has been moping on down to the barn for three days now?”
Flutters of guilt set off in my gut thinking about Theo. His last words to me had ruined my sleep since that day, playing on a horrible loop in my head.
I’d erase me too…
Christ, what had he even meant by that? And it was all my fault. I don’t know what possessed me to lie to him about the tattoo, but for some selfish, stupid reason I hadn’t wanted him to know that I still had it. That not only had I taken to running my fingers over it every night where it lay inked on my hip, but that I had added to it last year. Expanded it. Marked it with even more meaning to memorialize what we once had.
What. A. Dumbass.
He’d looked so crushed when I said I’d had it covered. I was a piece of shit for saying it. I knew that. I was a hypocrite too, accusing him of purposely hurting me to push me away, yet that’s exactly what I had done.
“Why would I care about that?” I groused, keeping my back to her.
“Oh hell no, we’re not doing that,” she exclaimed. A surprisingly strong hand landed on my shoulder, whipping me around to face her. “Do not lie to me and try to play that nonchalant, unaffected bullshit when we both know that you’re still head over heels for him. You forget that I was there from the beginning and I saw your browser history.”
I blinked at the bizarre comment. “Am I supposed to know what that means? What does that have to do with anything?”
Dani let out a frustrated grunt, rolling her eyes at me as she yanked her phone out of her back pocket. She scrolled through her photos for several seconds, her finger swiping furiously. When she found the one she wanted, she thrust it under my nose with a little huff of satisfaction.
Blood crawled up my face and set my cheeks on fire when I saw the photo she had snapped of my computer, the engagement ring website clear as day on the screen. I forgot that I had started looking those up back around the time of Homecoming.
Well, tried to forget.
Failed to forget.
