by R. J. Lewis
“I’m not going to the city with you after I’m finished high school,” I told him, “and that’s the end of that. Get over it. Move on.”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?!”
“I love you too much to let you go.”
“You wouldn’t be letting me go! I’m not going anywhere! I’ll be right here, putting my life back together.”
He moved to me again, cutting me with his stare. It wasn’t cold anymore. It was determined, and a determined Aston spelled trouble.
“You want me to grow without you there. You want me to make something of myself without you there. I’m going to be successful one day, and I’m going to have a job and all the time in the world, and you’re not going to be there on that journey. It makes the experience worthless, Elise. If we stick by each other, defy those odds, and make a go of it, we’ll have journeyed through it all – the ups and the downs, the bad days and the good days. It’s better than being apart and coming together again when we’ve got our shit sorted out. I don’t want that. I want us to grow together and come out on the other side. Any time apart is time wasted.”
He made a compelling speech. But I was stubborn and determined too, and burdening him with my bullshit felt selfish.
“No,” I told him sharply. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Why?” he demanded, exhausted.
“Mom needs help around here –”
“Stop making excuses!” he suddenly shouted, nostrils flared, eyes narrowed. “Tell me why!”
My entire body started shaking uncontrollably. “She really does need my help –”
“Shut up about Mom, Elise. She’s with Adrian, alright? He told me about it.”
My eyes widened. “What? When did you –”
“He said it last night, and he’ll take care of her. He promised after I told him I wanted you out of here.”
I didn’t respond. He shook his head and paced the room, looking like he wanted to strangle me. He should join the club. I wanted to strangle myself too sometimes.
“You’re afraid,” he told me. “I know what you’re feeling because I’ve been trying to conquer it the last seven months. You know what I realized at the end? You never get over the fear, El, you just learn to live with it. You confront it every single day. You face the unknown, the possibility of loss, and you learn to endure. We can do everything we talked about. You can dance and find your path wherever you go, but I want to be there and watch it.” His voice broke as he stopped to look at me. His eyes were red with unshed tears. He was killing me with that stare. “We can do it as long as you believe it and want it. Think about it, El.”
He turned and left the room. Tuck was waiting on the other side, and he strode in and circled around me, nudging me with his head. I fell to the ground and welcomed him into my arms, all the while I stared out the bedroom door, conflicted and…yeah, scared.
27.
Elise
I showed up at the bookstore, and I was pretty sure I was late. There was a crowd of people inside already seated. I slipped through the door and immediately spotted Hayden in the far back of the room, a book open in his lap. There was an empty chair beside him, and I had a feeling it was for me.
I tiptoed inside the room as a lady that looked remarkably like Hayden stood before everyone, reading lines out of a book. When Hayden noticed me, his face broke out in a warm smile. I sat down next to him and he handed me a copy of a book. Of Mice and Men read the cover. He whispered what page to turn to and I hastily did so. We sat in silence as the lady carried on, finishing out the page and then discussing what it meant to her. After she sat down, someone else stood up and talked about their favourite scene. This was the most choreographed book club I’d ever been in.
“Everything alright?” Hayden whispered.
I nodded, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth. Aston’s words weighed on me, and I didn’t know what to do.
“You sure?” he pressed.
I blinked back tears. “I don’t know,” I finally admitted. “Everything is a mess right now.”
He didn’t respond after that. Instead, he turned back to the speakers, waiting patiently for everyone to be done. After that, the first lady started handing out pizza boxes and everyone dived in, chatting to one another.
“It’s lame, I know,” Hayden chuckled. “But my mother forces me here. I kind of hoped to trick you into coming so I wouldn’t suffer alone.”
I turned to him and studied his soft expression. Then I blurted out, “Who hurt you?”
He stilled and his brown eyes shot to mine. I could feel him already starting to shut down. He scratched at his clean shaven jaw and didn’t answer me.
“She hurt you badly, didn’t she?” I asked him.
He nodded stiffly. “Yeah. It wasn’t her fault.”
“Whose fault was it?”
“Both of ours.”
“Why?”
He tapped the arm of his chair thoughtfully. “We let ourselves grow apart. We didn’t fight hard enough.”
I frowned, considering his words carefully. “I thought you were obsessed with her.”
“I was. I…am.”
“But how could you grow apart if you wanted her so much?”
“I don’t know, Elise. Sometimes it happens and you don’t realize it until it’s done and the other person is a stranger to you. Like I said, we didn’t fight hard enough for what we wanted, and in the end it was easier to leave than work it out.” He turned his gaze to me and studied me. “You’re hurting over that guy that came to see you, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Has he hurt you again?”
“No, he…he’s fighting for us.”
Hayden’s eyes brightened. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
I avoided looking at him as I muttered, “It’s a scary thing. He might hurt me again.”
“Of course he’ll hurt you again, and again, and again. That’s what relationships are all about. You hurt and forgive and fight to make it easier when it happens again in the future. A relationship is only strong when you’re facing obstacles. Coming out of it together, even if you’re not in one piece, is everything.”
I nodded, fighting back the emotion behind my eyes. “Are you still in love with her?”
“Yeah,” he answered straightaway.
“Even though she hurt you?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that really love?”
He leaned into me, until his mouth was to my ear, and whispered, “That’s life.”
Aston
Where did Elise find this fucking cat?
He was laying on his back in my lap and sucking at the sleeve of my shirt. What in the holy fuck? I stared down at him, not wanting to kick him off in fear of losing his respect, but also wanting my fucking body back.
I rested my head against the wall. I was sitting on the bottom staircase facing the door, waiting for her to come back. She’d been gone two hours, and I was losing my shit. What was she doing? Had the doctor wooed her? He probably had, the sleazy good looking bastard.
I’d returned too late after enduring months of misery and darkness. She deserved to move on. Who the hell was I to come back and fuck with her head again?
Chances are, she’d come back and tell me to fuck off and I wouldn’t. I’d keep fighting for another chance because, fuck, I’d never blow it. I learned the hard way: pushing what you loved away out of fear cost you everything. And I wasn’t a coward anymore. Numbers were just numbers at the end of the day. Elise, on the other hand…Elise was everything to me.
When I heard a car pass by, I flicked Tuck off my lap. He landed on his head – great, I was a cat abuser – and I quickly bent down to check on him, but he sprang up to his feet and galloped away like nothing happened. Chill cat.
I moved to the front door and opened it, peering out into the cold streets. A car door shut and I followed the sound to the neighbour’s driveway. Becky caught my
eye, and she narrowed hers as she hurried into her house, cell phone already pressed to her ear. “He’s back,” I heard her hiss as she disappeared inside her house.
Disappointed, I stepped out and walked down the driveway. I stood on the sidewalk, staring from one end to the other, waiting. Elise wasn’t coming back. She was with some guy by the name of Hayden, and she’d probably spend the night with him hoping I’d be gone when she returned come morning.
I ran my hand through my hair and clenched my teeth. Pain rocked me to the core and I had to stop and take a few deep breaths to calm myself. I closed my eyes and tried to accept it. I had failed her, but god, what a journey we’d led, and it pained me because I felt like we truly hadn’t even started yet.
Knock. Knock.
My eyes whipped open. I spun around, searching for the sound.
Knock. Knock.
I stopped mid-step and stared at my car and at the tall, slender figure leaning against it. My gaze slowly travelled up those black fluffy boots, snowflake leggings, plaid jacket, long blonde hair, and stopped when it reached those ocean blue eyes. I took a step closer to her, a lump caught in my throat as she smiled at me with glistening eyes.
“It’s okay, Aston,” she whispered breathlessly. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
Those were the same words she’d said to me through the wall we shared the first night I’d slept in our house. I ran a hand over my face, overwhelmed with emotion. She came to me and the second her arms wrapped around my body, I crumbled against her. I held her tight against me, sucking in breaths as I apologized over and over again.
“I’ll never leave you,” I said. “Never. Never. Never. Be with me, Elise. I promise you won’t regret it. We’ll work through anything. I promise.”
“I’m here,” she said back, breaking apart. “And I love you.”
I pulled away and frantically cleared the strands of hair from out of her face. I stared down at her and wiped away coating her cheeks. “I love you,” I told her. “It’s only ever been you, El. We’ll make it work, yeah?”
“On one condition,” she said, solemnly.
“Anything.”
“Tuck comes with me.”
I stared at her for a moment, and then I grinned from ear to ear. “That fucking cat…he’ll kill himself one of these days, I swear it, but fine. If he comes with the package, I’ll marry him too.”
She smiled back. “Then I’m all yours, Aston.”
I kissed her fiercely. “This is it,” I told her, slipping my tongue into her mouth for a quick lick. “This will be our new beginning. You and me…and that fucking cat.”
Epilogue
Elise
Did I return that pink glittery wallet? Yeah, I did. Hayden didn’t let the matter drop, and I saw an awful lot of him over the months after I joined the boring book club his mom had forced him in.
I had copped a lot of dirty looks from school, especially when Aston came to spend every other weekend with me, but we didn’t care what anyone thought. Michelle and the other bitches kept their distance. It’s funny what happens when you fight back. Nobody wants to mess with a difficult target.
Mom was still switched off, and she didn’t show much affection, but she handled our relationship easily. As long as we still came to see her, that was all that mattered. Plus, she was less lonely now that Adrian was really on the scene. They were taking it slow. Like, painfully slow. I warned him he might have to wait years for Mom to make that leap, but he loved her, and he told me he’d wait however long it took. I knew Dad would have approved. I don’t think he’d have found better hands to put her in.
Deck switched schools, but his reputation was tarnished and it gave his family a bad name. I still saw him around town, but he kept a good distance from me. He was fighting his intent to rape charge, and I’d probably have to come back down to testify, but it turned out I wasn’t the only girl who had something to say about his forcefulness. There were two other girls that came forward, determined to put him away. He had very little chance at winning, and I hoped by the end of it his life would be forever marred with a criminal charge. I heard it was hard to find a respectable job with one of those…
Everything was taken care of before I left. I touched base with Cindy and told her to take over my homeless musings with Ray the pigeon and bird feeder. She vehemently refused to do it. I slapped some sense into her. It took days of nagging before she finally agreed, but only once a month, which was better than nothing.
I finished out the year with decent grades. I applied for colleges. I figured I’d attend a few classes just to pass the time before I really found something I was happy to do. If the dancing worked out then great, but if it didn’t…well, there were a million other things in life I could try.
This whole bullshit of choosing your path at eighteen was absolutely ridiculous. What was the goddamn rush? I was still trying to figure out who I was, let alone my forever job. Maybe it was one thing, maybe a dozen others. Life was a journey, and so long as Aston was by my side, I was willing to venture into the unknown with both feet in.
I battled a lot of depression. Nothing was easy and there was truly no happily ever after with a cherry on top, but Aston made a difference. He gave me support and a shoulder to lean on. He made the tough days bearable, and I hated that he had to cop those emotional shifts in me, but he proved time and time again that he was staying by my side, no matter what.
There was something beautiful in that kind of love. I wanted us to work. I wanted to prove Dad wrong and say, “Yeah, you were right to worry, you were right to express those fears, but look, Dad. Look how hard we’re working to be together. I can do this. I know what I want, and it’s him.”
It was nerve-wracking leaving home, and god, the new apartment we leased was small when I walked in with Tuck pressed to my chest. Aston seemed proud to show off the empty space, opening up the curtains to every room, letting the natural light inside so I could see the monstrosity in all its horrible glory.
“We have a lot of work to do,” I told him, frowning at the derelict walls.
“You can turn this into a home,” he replied, squeezing my ass as he stopped to stand next to me.
“It’s bearable as long as we have each other, I guess.”
“Don’t sound so excited.”
“I am.”
He wrapped his arms around me, and kissed my neck. “One day I’m going to buy you a castle. I’m going to make you my queen and fuck you on every marble surface of our abode.”
I cringed. “You know, for a second there, I thought you were on to something.”
“You’ll be on to something hard in a minute.”
I laughed as he removed Tuck from my hands and set him on the floor. Then he picked me up and I wrapped my legs around him as he placed me on the tiny kitchen counter five feet away. Yeah, it was seriously five feet away. Our place was a shoebox, but it was the first building block to our empire.
Aston kissed me, running his hands up my short shorts and around the curve of my ass. “We’re going to make it,” he told me. “It’s going to be hard. I’ll probably shut down when I’m locked inside my head, but you’ll bring me back again. I know it.”
I nodded, kissing him lightly on the mouth. “And I might freak out and scream at you. I might lose my shit and act like a baby who’s starved of attention, but you’ll bring me back again too, right?”
He looked at me with his disarming green eyes and nodded solemnly. “I’ll do anything for you, Elise. I promise.”
We kissed me and he slipped my shorts down my legs. I complained about Tuck bearing witness to our sinful ways, so Aston picked me up and took me to the bedroom.
The first leg of our journey was done.
The end
Thank you
Um, so why do you guys read my stories? I don’t get it, but I’m so humble and grateful you bother time and time again.
This story sort of simmered inside my head for a while, and I puked it on the
keyboard in a matter of weeks. I intended on writing more than one, but I didn’t want a cliff hanger because I was tired of torturing readers. Characters are always so alive inside my head. I always feel like one book never does them justice, hence why I carry on the way I do.
If you made it this far, thank you so freaking much. I appreciate ratings and reviews. They help an author out like you can’t believe.
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Happy reading!
RJ