The Girl I Once Loved: Love & Hate Duet

I smile at my reflection in the bathroom mirror as I rake my fingers through the short ends of my hair. It’s going to take me a minute to get used to this new cut since the last time I had it this short I was still a lovestruck teenager—though if I really think about it, not much has changed since then.

Deep down, I knew if I ever cut it off again, it would need to be by her hand and no one else’s.

As I watched my hair fall to the floor of my loft earlier this afternoon, it felt like Sky was finally giving me permission to let go of our past. With each precise cut of the scissor, she began to heal the cracks of my soul, making sure to bind it to hers.

It feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

To let go of all that pain, all that agony I had been carrying with me for these last few years, feels optimistically like a new start. Like there is still hope for us. Hope for a new beginning.

I turn off the bathroom light and hurriedly tread into my room, picking up my phone off my bedside table just to see if there are any texts from my girl. I can’t help but feel a pang of disappointment when there’s nothing there.

It’s close to two in the morning and still no sign of Sky.

I tell myself that she’s probably having too much fun over at Daisy’s bachelorette party and must have lost track of time. That I shouldn’t take it personally, and that I should be happy she’s enjoying herself. If by chance she doesn’t make her way into my bed tonight, I shouldn’t read too much into it.

I’ve spent many nights alone in my bed, after all.

One more won’t kill me.

But as I slip under the sheets, I can’t help but hate how cold my bed feels without her in it. How empty and hollow it is without her warm body pressed up against mine. Her cherry blossom perfume clings to the pillowcase beside me, making me inhale her sweet scent, hoping it’s enough to ease the melancholy her absence always seems to provide.

Yeah.

I’m not going to be able to sleep a wink tonight.

Not without her anyway.

This last month or so that we’ve been sharing the same bed has spoiled me, and now I’m addicted to falling asleep with the sound of her soft breathing in my ear. The day could have been shit for all I care. I’d still be wearing a fucking smile on my lips knowing that I’d end the day with her in my arms. Just knowing that I had Sky to come home to made all the difference. I don’t think I’ve been in a foul mood since she started creeping into my bed at night, leaving only when the sun was high in the sky.

And by Clara and my father’s not so discreet glances towards us over the breakfast table, they know exactly what we’ve been up to in my loft. I was sure my father would say something to the sound of not messing around with my stepsister, but if he has any reservations about it, he’s kept his opinions to himself. Maybe Clara has finally gathered the courage to tell him about our sordid past. Or maybe he’s known all along. I can’t be sure since my father can be very hard to read at times.

Still…I hope he’s on board, because there is nothing and no one that will tear me away from the woman I love again.

My thoughts are interrupted, though, when I hear the sound of a car engine driving up the driveaway, alerting me to someone’s arrival home.

Sky.

Ever so eagerly, I jump out of bed and run towards my door, ecstatic to welcome my girl back home, only to find Sky getting out of none other than Stacy Monroe’s car.

Shit.

This can’t be good.

My muscles tense up as I watch Sky slam the car door shut with such force, I’m surprised it doesn’t wake up the whole neighborhood, much less our parents. I swallow dryly as her penetrating gaze pierces me to the spot, as she slowly walks up the flight of stairs towards me.

I don’t so much as move as I watch her take one step at a time, anger mixed with hurt coating her beautiful gray eyes. My chest tightens when I see that her armor is also fully on display, letting me know that whatever happened tonight was enough to undo all the work we’ve accomplished.

Fuck.

“Rough night?” I ask when she finally takes the last step.

She cuts her eyes at me and marches inside, her anger so palpable I almost choke on it.

I take a fortifying breath and gently close the door behind her, not sure if it’s the wisest thing for me to do, considering Sky looks like she’d rather murder me than talk to me.

I cross my arms over my chest, inwardly preparing myself for more heartbreak. It’s so fucking clear in her gaze how she’s about to end me, right here and now. I was a fool to have believed the past wouldn’t rear its ugly head and destroy everything we were just starting to build.

What the fuck could have happened with Stacy tonight for Sky to be like this?

But just as the question pops into my brain, so does its chilling answer.

She knows.

“Sky—” On instinct, I open my stupid mouth to justify my actions, but my girl holds out a menacing finger at me, stopping the words from coming out.

“No. You don’t get to talk right now. Not yet.”

She begins to frantically pace the floor, left and right, as if trying to get a hold of her anger long enough to have a conversation with me. Reluctantly, I leave her to it, even though with each second that passes by, my fear and apprehension hike up to skyscraper heights.

I can’t lose her again.

I fucking can’t.

I won’t survive it this time.

I’m watching my whole world begin to crumble around me, and only Sky holds the power to stop it from completely withering away.

As if she knows I’m close to losing it, she stops in the middle of her tracks and faces me head on.

“Is it true?”

My knee jerk reaction is to open my mouth to give her some wisecrack comment or tell her I have no idea what she’s talking about since I’m not a mind reader. But my heart won’t let me do it. We’ve both suffered enough with our lies and evasions of the truth. One of us needs to be brave now, and it might as well be me since I’m responsible for all the anguish she’s currently suffering.

“Yes.”

Her eyes instantly well up with tears, but her expression remains as lethal as ever.

“You’re not even going to ask me what I’m referring to? Or how I know?”

“No.”

The loud scoff she lets out feels like tiny paper cuts slung at my soul.

“You really are something,” she says, nostrils flaring. “I thought for sure you’d deny it. That maybe you’d even try to defend your actions. But here you are. Head held high like it doesn’t affect you in any way.”

“You want the truth, then I’ll give it to you, Sky. All you need to do is ask. But don’t assume you know how I’m feeling right now. You have no idea,” I tell her in earnest.

“Fine.” She throws her hands up in the air. “Tell me then. I want to hear it from your mouth how you viciously set out to destroy me. How you planned and plotted the perfect way to hurt me. How you made sure that, because of you, I’d never have a normal relationship again. Because of you, I’m damaged goods now, unable to open myself up to love even when it was within my very grasp. Because in the back of my mind, I could never truly trust my instincts since they had so miserably failed me with you.”

With two large strides, I eat the distance between us, making Sky have to take two steps back to keep me at arm’s length. I bite into my cheek but make no move to get closer.

“If you’re referring to that goodie two-shoes of a boyfriend, Gael, then you know as well as I do, that I’m not the reason you were never able to fall in love with him. You can’t give your heart to someone when it already belongs to someone else.”

I try not to flinch with the way she stares daggers into me. Her rage is so evidently clear, it’s all I’m able to cope with right now, placing my own suffering on the back burner.

“I’ll tell you all that you want to know, if you answer me this one question. Why did you lie to me about Dartmouth? Why did you let us all believe that they turned you down? Answer me that, Sky? You want the truth, then by God, I’ll give it to you. Just know you can’t lie to me either.”

Sky takes another few steps back, turning her head to the side so she doesn’t have to confront her part in her own tragic past.

“No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to use my actions to defend yours. No.” She shakes her head, her entire body trembling with rage and grief.

“Fuck, Sky. This is it. This is the moment where we can be honest for once. Don’t hide from this. Let’s confront it. Together. That’s the only way we’re going to make it.”

“Make it?! Make it?!” she repeats, wide-eyed and astounded. “Do you honestly believe we can recover from this? That there is even an us to save?”

“Yes!” I shout out just as ardently. “Because we’re no longer those scared kids we used to be. Because we’ve learned from our mistakes. Because we deserve some fucking happiness in our lives after all the shit we went through.”

Sky grows eerily quiet, her silent tears the only testament to her pain.

“Just tell me what you need me to do? Do you want me to grovel? I’ll do that and more if I have to. Do you want me to say I’m sorry, then yes, I’m fucking sorry how I went about it. I wish I had found another way back then to force you to take that grant and follow your dreams. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. But don’t stand there with accusation in your eyes when all I tried to do was give you a better future. A future I could never give you in a million years, even if I wanted to.”

“You took my choice away,” she quickly retorts. “I’ll never forgive you for that.”

“But that’s where you’re wrong. You see it as a choice, when in reality, there wasn’t much of one. Tell me. What was I supposed to do, Sky? Would you rather I’d have been a selfish prick and kept you in this dead end of an island? Would you have rather given up on all your dreams to stay with me? Could you have loved me through that, or would you eventually fall out of love with me, resenting me for all the paths you didn’t take? You think I stole your choice? Fuck, Sky. What choice did I have?”

“I loved you!” she shouts. “And you broke us!”

“No! Don’t you dare fucking do that. Don’t you dare come here demanding the truth from me only to lie to my face,” I exclaim with steel resolve. “Don’t say you loved me when we both know you still do. Don’t say that the feelings you had for me are in the past when I can fucking taste how your love for me still lingers on your lips. Don’t say you loved me, Sky, when I never fucking stopped loving you. Don’t…please just don’t,” I start to plead, manic. “Just tell me the truth. Just say what we have been skirting around all this time, pretending not to see it since the minute you came back to me. Just say that you love me. Because I fucking can’t stop being in love with you. I’ll never stop, Sky. Never.”

The sight of every tear streaking down her face feels like a slow torturous death.

Ever so slowly, I walk over to where she is currently frozen on the spot, needing to be near her as humanly possible, as I bleed at her feet and pour my heart and soul out to her.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Sky. Believe me, the last thing I ever wanted to do was give you pain. But I didn’t know how I could save us and still make sure you followed your dreams. I didn’t know. I was an eighteen-year-old messed up kid who found his fucking soulmate in his stepsister and had no idea how best to love her. I thought if I did this one unselfish act that I would be okay with loving you from afar. That I’d be just fine. But I wasn’t. I’ve never been fine, Sky. You say I broke us that night…that I broke you… well, I died that night. You, being back here, is the first time I’ve been alive in years. Please, don’t let the pain of our past damage the future we can still have together. Please.”

I’m begging.

I’m fucking begging.

And I’ll beg every day of my pathetic life if I have to.

Because without her, my life has no meaning.

Without her, I’m nothing.

I’ve been nothing for the past seven years, and like hell I’ll go back to that without putting up a fight.

“Look at me,” I plead, inching close enough to softly slip my palm to her face and caress her cheek. “This is it, little stalker. This is where we need to be. I’m all in. Every part of my heart is yours and will always and forever be yours. Now you have to make a decision. Do you want the past to dictate our future, or will you be brave enough to take this leap with me? To be in this with me. You accused me of taking your choice away, well, here you have it back. You alone have the power to command how we go from here. You know where my heart is at. If I could, I’d cut the damn thing out of my chest and give it to you. Because it’s yours. It will always be yours.”

You have all my forevers, Sky.

All of them.

Please see that.

Please remember that.

She pulls away as if my touch physically pains her to bear for more than a few seconds.

“I can’t…I just…I can’t,” she stammers looking around the room and being bombarded by all the recent memories we made together. “I just can’t…I can’t be here right now.”

And with those cryptic words, she runs out the door, not even giving me a parting glance back.

Fuck.

She’s going to leave me.

Again.

She’s going to leave me and I’m at a loss of how I can stop her.

Like Sky earlier, I begin to pace my floor, tugging at my blond strands until I manage to pull a few out of their roots. When my gaze falls onto the empty ruffled bed, the same one that still smells of her, my heart more than reason pushes me out the door and has me running towards my childhood home. On featherlight feet, I quickly walk through the house, up the stairs, and down the hallway that leads to her bedroom. I let out a relieved exhale when I find her door open, and slide into the darkness of her room, Sky’s soft whimpered sobs splintering my heart in two as I lock the door behind me.

I wait for her to tell me to leave.

To demand I leave her alone.

But when she remains completely silent to my presence, I walk over to the empty spot in her bed and slide in against her.

“Noah—” she begins to protest as I wrap my arms around her and pull her head to nestle in my chest.

“No, Sky. If you need to hate me, then go for it. Hate me with all your heart. Curse my name and my very existence if you need to. But I’m staying right here. You need to know that I’ll never abandon you. Through the good times and the bad, I’ll be right here. Loving you. Always.”

As if my words were exactly what she needed to hear, she lets go and feels every ounce of her suffering and pain, making sure I bear witness to all of it.

She cries until there are no more tears in her to shed.

She curses me out, until her voice is too weak to utter another word.

She hates me with every breath in her being, until hate becomes too heavy a burden for her to carry alone.

And all the while, I hold onto her, as she falls apart in my embrace.

I tell her that I love her, even as I cry for what could have been.

I tell her that I’ll never stop loving her, even when the future still remains unclear.

And as her pain takes its toll and lulls her to sleep in my arms, I promise never to let her go again.

That I will keep her heart safe even at the risk of mine.