I ignored all of them.
I walked out of the Kavanagh house, took my phone out, and texted Porter back.
“Got held up. On my way.”
Just as I suspected, the beach was empty. I approached the spot Wren and I had spent the first hour of our vacation. I told myself I’d revisit this place with Wren, not with Porter.
He stood in the exact spot Wren and I had been lying. Before walking closer to Porter, I studied him where he stood, motionless on the sand. His hands were pushed into his jean pockets and his hair blew in every direction. His eyes were focused on the water, squinting just the slightest.
“Porter!” I called, walking up behind him.
He turned with a smile.
A smile that said I’ve missed you. A smile that said I’m sorry. A smile that said you’re everything to me. A smile I knew.
“I’m glad you could finally make it.” He took a step toward me, immediately forcing me to step back.
I had to keep my distance. I couldn’t handle being close to him because every time he was near, I could feel my chest caving in. “Why did you ask me to meet you?” My patience was practically non-existent, and I could feel myself clutching at my nerves as if they were the only thing keeping me alive.
I allowed myself a few more seconds to study him. He was still good looking. His hair was still blonde, some parts lighter than others. His face had become more sculpted over the years; he no longer looked like the young boy I worshiped. Smile lines rimmed his cheeks and a shadow of stubble appeared along his jaw. He looked like a young man.
My heart did the thing I hated most. Like a hammer, it pounded onto my chest, forcing me to acknowledge the fact that Porter still affected me.
“This was a bad idea.” I began backing away, feeling helpless in his company.
“Kingsley. Wait.”
Five fingers held onto my wrist and if I had an axe, I would have cut my own arm off in order to get away. I would have endured the pain and lived happily without one of my limbs if it meant never feeling his touch again.
I felt my face grow hot. My hands balled into fists. I began counting in my head, waiting to get to ten before shoving Porter away.
He let go after eight seconds.
“I just—” he began. “I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long. Explain some things.”
“There’s nothing to explain!” I yelled.
Porter closed his eyes and took in deep breaths before speaking again. His fingers were knotted together, giving every indication that he was trying his best to control his nerves. When he opened his eyes, a flash of the innocent boy came through.
“What do you want from me?” I choked out. I wanted to sound brave. I wanted to sound as if he didn’t have any control over me, but my body wouldn’t allow it. It wanted me to feel everything.
“Four years ago, when I said goodbye, it wasn’t my decision.”
I shook my head, confused by his words. “It was your decision.”
“It wasn’t,” he repeated, taking another step toward me.
This time I didn’t step back.
“The morning after that party we went to, my parents stormed into my bedroom. They asked me a ton of questions about what I had taken and who had given it to me. Because I didn’t give them any answers, they threatened to send me to a boarding school. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to be sent away, so I told them your foster dad sold me shrooms, thinking it would be the easiest way out of it without getting either of us in trouble.”
My cheeks burned. My ankles felt as if they could give out at any second. The more Porter explained, the more I hated him...and I never thought I could hate him any more than I had. The weeks after I was taken out of the Hendersons’ care were terrifying. Not the kind of terrifying I witnessed when I was in their care, but an entirely different horrible situation. I woke up every day knowing that I was too old to be in the system. I spent my days watching younger kids upset over the idea of not being good enough. My life was turned upside down by a boy I thought I loved.
“You have no idea what your lies did to my life!”
“I don’t, and I’m sorry, I—”
I cut him off. “You aren’t sorry! You ruined my life. You fucking lied to me. Our entire relationship was a fucking lie!”
I turned, committing myself to walking away from Porter once and for all, but his arms wrapped around my waist. His lips moved toward my ear, and as infuriated as I was at what he’d done, as infuriated as I was at the way he still had control over my emotions, I couldn’t push him away. I couldn’t move a single inch for fear of falling to pieces and becoming as tiny as the granules under my feet.
“I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”
His breath hit my ear, and as many times as I imagined this moment, the moment where Porter would tell me he was sorry, I never once thought I’d be the one that wanted to walk away for good.
I turned and pushed his body away from mine, needing the distance to be able to speak.
“You have no idea what you caused in my life. Will you always be my first love? Yes. But that’s all you’ll ever be. My memories of you tarnished the minute you told me you didn’t love me anymore.”
“I didn’t mean it!”
“You meant every word. You never loved me, Porter. You were selfish and you thought love meant getting drunk together. Having meaningless sex. You never asked about my life and I never felt the need to tell you. The love we thought we had for each other wasn’t real!”
Porter’s chest heaved up and down. “My love for you was real, I just couldn’t tell my parents the truth. I didn’t want them knowing how addicted I was to alcohol or anything else, for that matter!”
His words ignited something inside of me. Love isn’t something you hide from. Love isn’t something you trade in. Love is a priority. It’s the one thing in people’s lives that makes them want to live.
It’s the one thing in my life that’s kept me breathing.
“I won’t ever love you, Porter. You’re nothing to me.”
I would have been able to enjoy my words more had I not seen Wren storming down the beach to where Porter and I were standing.
“What the fuck is going on?” Wren screamed.
He walked past me, his eyes only focused on one thing. Porter. Before I realized what was happening, Porter’s back was on the sand and Wren was above him.
“What the fuck do you want with my girlfriend?” Wren’s face was bright red; fury overwhelming his features. Without giving him a chance to answer, Wren’s hand wrapped around Porter’s throat while the other balled into a fist, ready to strike.
“Wren, stop!” I ordered, grabbing onto his arm.
“Why would you want me to stop? Do you love him?” He looked from me to Porter.
“No!” I yelled, without hesitation. “I don’t love him!”
“But I love her,” Porter gasped out.
No more words were spoken. Wren’s arm escaped my hold, and his fist collided into Porter’s face. I watched, not able to move a muscle. My eyes were glued on the only two men who had ever owned a piece of my heart.
The violence I endured as a child did me no favors as I watched it ensue between Wren and Porter. I felt each punch as if I were on the receiving end again. As much as I hated Porter, I couldn’t stand by and watch someone be beaten.
“Stop!” I pleaded, stepping forward to grab back onto Wren’s arm. “Stop!”
Blood trickled down Porter’s face. His body lay in the sand, his knees tucked into his chest. He covered his face with both arms, protecting it in case Wren chose to strike again. Wren stood above him, keeping his fists balled at his sides. His sharp inhalations resulted in his entire body shaking. I’d never seen a more terrifying look than the one Wren was wearing. He looked positively ferocious.
I closed my eyes, my body leaning toward Porter, my feet wanting to move to him. I hated him, but he was hurt. I hated him, but I couldn’t stand there and
watch him bleed. Before I moved to help Porter, I felt Wren’s fingers on my wrist.
“You’re dying to help him, aren’t you?” Wren asked, sadness brimming his voice.
Porter loved me for almost two hundred days. In those two hundred days, I laughed more than I ever imagined possible, I learned to love myself, and I was able to escape my own personal hell. I loved Porter for many more days than my calendar said. Some of those days were before we ever spoke a word, the other ones were actually reciprocated. The day he told me he stopped loving me was the day I lit every bit of love I felt for him on fire. For years, I blamed myself for falling for Porter. For years, I refused to let myself fall for anyone else.
And then Wren came along and changed everything.
My insides were twisting in agony. I wanted to help Porter, but that was only because I knew how it felt feeling as if every bone in your body was broken. I also knew that if bent down to help Porter, Wren would walk away from me.
I heard Wren repeat his question. “You’re dying to help him, aren’t you?”
I focused my eyes on Wren’s, knowing that they expressed more than my words could. Before I could answer, Porter coughed, the noise making me break eye contact with Wren. I looked down at Porter, hoping he would stand up, but he was barely moving.
I kneeled down and that’s all it took for Wren to walk away.
In that moment, I could have ran after Wren.
But I didn’t.
I could have yelled for him to stop, explaining that I just needed to make sure Porter was alive.
But I didn’t.
I kneeled down, pressed my fingertips against Porter’s neck, and made sure there was a pulse.
When I felt it, that’s when I looked up, but Wren was already out of sight.
“Porter,” I said, shaking him gently. “Porter, you need to wake up.”
He moved his hand slightly and a moan escaped his mouth.
“Porter, please, open your eyes.”
He slowly peeled one eye open, a small smile creeping on his lips. “Your boyfriend is a real asshole.”
Porter knew what he’d done. He knew if he acted like he was really hurt, I’d fall for his performance, just as I always had. Bastard.
My hand collided with his bloodied cheek. Years of pent up anger exploded, and all I wanted to do was take all of the bad out on him.
Quicker than I thought he’d be able to move, Porter was upright, grabbing my hands and forcing them down at my sides.
“Let go of me!” I screamed.
The beach was still empty and no one was around to save me, which was okay because I’d always saved myself. I broke free from his grip and pushed his body back down on the sand, holding each of his wrists down. I positioned myself over his chest, not enough to touch, but so that our eyes could be focused only on each other.
“How dare you act like you were practically dead!”
“How dare you act like you don’t still love me,” Porter retorted. He wasn’t trying to break away. He lay back onto the sand, almost as if he were lounging, enjoying the sun beating down on his face.
“My feelings for you are the farthest thing from love,” I hissed. “The moment you told me you didn’t love me anymore was the moment I realized I was a better person than you. Our entire relationship was a sham; the second I first saw you, I put you up on a pedestal and worshiped the ground you walked on. But when you told me you didn’t love me anymore, that’s when I knew that all along, I was the strong one. I was the one with the better heart.”
“Kingsley,” Porter began, trying to move from my hold.
“No! You don’t get to say anything.” I clamped down onto his wrists tighter. “You had a chance to love me for 171 days!” My jaw dropped. I said the number, the one I only kept to myself, out loud. I said the number that I hated.
“Y-you...you counted the days we were together?” Porter’s cheeks lifted.
“That number means nothing now.”
“Obviously it does if you remember it,” he snapped back.
“Did you not hear what I said? I don’t love you!” My throat was raw with the words I’d wanted to tell him for so long. “I don’t love you!” I shouted again.
I don’t love him.
I don’t love him.
I don’t love him.
My heart was doing jumping jacks in my chest as I repeated the statement in my head.
I don’t love him.
Two seconds and I was up on my feet, not caring about the sand that had somehow worked its way into my shorts. Porter was yelling for me, but I was already running down the beach, dodging the seashells that had washed up with the tide. Five seconds passed and I could no longer hear Porter’s pleas for me to come back. It took me thirty seconds to get to the top of Wren’s driveway.
Four more seconds and I was inside, climbing the steps.
I heard Wren shouting, screaming obscenities, only they were coming from the guest bedroom, the last place I expected him to be. I moved to the doorway. Wren’s mother was sitting on the bed, yelling at Wren.
“Wren, calm down, please!” she cried. “What’s going on?”
Wren was rummaging throughout the room, grabbing my belongings from every surface, and throwing them all into my suitcase. He handled each thing with about as much care as you’d handle something you’d found in the junkyard. I watched as he grabbed my cell phone charger and yanked it from the wall, hurling it into the bag.
“Wren!” I called.
He stopped.
He whirled his body around to look me in the eyes, and it was as if time stopped moving.
The silence between us stung. I knew what I’d done, and I knew Wren’s heart was breaking right before me.
“I’m gonna let you two have some privacy,” Wren’s mother said. She stood up from the bed and as she moved past me in the doorway, whispered, “You can fix this.”
Her words gave me the ammunition to walk toward Wren.
“Don’t,” he said, his hands out in front of him. “Don’t you dare try and fix this.”
“Wren, please.” I tried moving closer, but his hands pushed at my shoulders, forcing me away. “What happened, it wasn’t what you think.”
His face went red.
My bag collided against the wall, knocking the glass lamp onto the ground. I wanted to wrap my arms around his waist and explain how sorry I was. I wanted to convince him that I my heart was filled with love, but it wasn’t for Porter.
I wanted to say all of these things, but before I had the chance to, Wren was running out the door.
I called his name...and called and called, but he refused to turn back around. He swung the front door open so hard it crashed into the wall. He didn’t bother trying to close it, knowing I was right behind him.
“Wren, please, just stop!” I yelled.
“Stop following me! Go away!”
“Please, just let me explain!”
His footsteps continued. Down the driveway. Across the small road. Down the hill to the beach, where it was still mostly empty. A few parents sat on the sand, watching as their children played in the ocean. Wren walked near the water, the waves hitting his ankles and wetting the bottoms of his jeans. His arms swung briskly at his sides and not once did he turn around to see if I was still behind him.
For so much of my life, I hated better than I loved. I pushed people who deserved to be in my life away. If I had given myself a chance to love, my life might have been different. I might not have gone through men as if they were a daily newspaper. It wouldn’t have taken me months to become comfortable with Trish. It might not have taken me so long to realize that I was over Porter and the one person I truly loved might not be walking away from me right now.
The things that had happened in my life, the man who took advantage of my body, the woman who treated me like I was her own personal punching bag—I’d allowed them to shape me. I fell in love with a boy I barely knew because he was the epitome of what I thought
was happiness. That false happiness turned me into a girl who took the love she thought he had for her and turned it into her entire universe.
Hate sank its teeth into me from a young age. Jenny made me think it was because of my skin color. Mr. Henderson made me think it was because of my body.
I didn’t realize until that very second, as I ran after Wren, that somewhere along the line, I stopped hating things. I started to recognize signs of love. I started to feel things, opened my doors that I was convinced I’d locked forever. This was all because of love.
Wren was ten feet away from me, close enough that I could hear his heavy panting as he kicked the sand. Shouting his name wasn’t working. He refused to turn around.
“I need you!” I cried. “I need you more than I’ve ever needed anyone!”
His steps continued.
“You’re everything to me!” Tears rolled down my cheeks. My eyes burned as the wind whipped through my hair.
His steps continued.
“It was always you. You were always the one I was meant for.”
His steps continued.
I never told him these things. I’d expressed my feelings for him through my fingertips, my lips, my entire body, but never had these words escaped my mouth. I’d been terrified of him knowing the truth.
Until now.
“I—” I stopped walking, knowing I needed my whole body to say what I’d been holding in for months. “I love you!”
His steps stopped.
“I love you,” I repeated.
Wren slowly turned around to face me. The ocean waves continued thrashing against our ankles. The sun continued beating down on our faces. We stood face to face, just staring at each other, our mouths both silent.
Three words, eight letters, two smiles mirroring each other.
I loved him.
In Control (The City Series) Page 22