I never thought we would end up here.
“I did, but I had to stay until I was seventeen.”
Which I didn’t mind really, it gave me something to focus on while I was doing a lot of healing, and no one ever bullied me there. I even made a few friends.
“An extra year. That’s rough.”
I desperately wanted to reach across and open his white-knuckled fist. He finally twisted his head just enough to look back at me, and I saw the torment behind his eyes that I’d sentenced him to.
“Cole… Please just say whatever is on your mind.”
“I honestly don’t know where to start.” He lowered his head, breaking eye contact. “But you made the wrong decision,” he said while I was trying to think of something to say to make all of this better.
I swallowed a metallic-tasting acid. “I did what I thought was the best thing for you. I didn’t want you to have to give up everything.”
He laughed without humour and shook his head. “But that’sexactlywhat you made me do. For fuck’s sake, Oakley! How many times did I tell you how much you mean to me? How much I love you? How you areeverything to me? I don’t understand how you concluded that I was better off without you.”
My heart stalled.
Present tense?
Everything he just said was all present tense. Love, not loved. It knocked the air right out of my lungs because I’d never stopped loving him.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Cole. I truly am. I thought you’d eventually be fine, that you’d get over us and go to the university you’d wanted. I thought you’d find someone else and be happy...”
Though, selfishly, I never wanted him to be with anyone but me.
“Well, I didn’t. I’m not fine. I’m not over you. There’s no one else, and I’m not happy. I haven’t been happy since you fucking left… but thank you for letting me go to an English university.”
His honestly cut me open and left me to bleed in his parents’ garden.
“I guess it doesn’t matter to you, though. You’ve got your perfect little life halfway around the world,” he added.
His words were another blow to the heart. “You think I have a perfect life? That it’s even possible to be close to perfect without you? God, Cole! There hasn’t been one second that I haven’t thought about you. Every single thing reminds me of you or something we’ve done. Every morning, when I wake up, I still expect you to be there, and every morning you’re not, it breaks my heart. I can’t get over it. As hard as I try, I’m stuck in the past, and not because of what happened to me, but because ofyou.”
His jaw tightened. “You did that, Oakley! This was all because of you. Iwantedto come. I was fucking ready to get on that plane!”
“I couldn’t ask you to move to the other side of the world.”
“I would’ve moved to the fucking moon!” he snapped.
I flinched, wrapping my arms around myself as nausea curled in my stomach.
“Cole…”
“I don’t understand how you were able to walk away from me. You knew I wanted to be with you, so why did you do it?”
I groaned, and before I could stop it, I blurted out the one thing I’d never told him…
“Because you deserve better than me.”
His body jolted, his face fell, and the colour in his cheeks drained. “What do you mean?” he asked, his voice lethal.
Why did I say that?
“Oakley. Talk.”
My skin was too tight, it was as if my scalp was shrinking. I hated this conversation already, hated how I felt back then, and hated how it still slipped into my life now.
