AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I don’t know why I push her away, rejecting her attention and affection when it is all I crave and want. Self-preservation perhaps. I move away from her, still avoiding looking into her eyes, not wanting to see that pity.
But she doesn’t let go. She only holds on tighter.
“I’m not here for pity, Alexa. You can tell me to go. You have every right to hate me for what I have done to us, to you. But I am not here because I feel sorry for you. I am here because I love you and I can’t live without you.”
It takes a moment for my mind to process the words. And even when I do, I am not sure I believe them.
“Look at me,” she begs, and I comply this time, turning towards her and casting my gaze over those pools of brilliant green. “I panicked. I was afraid and I did what I knew how to do. Deny. Move on. Forget. Except I can’t forget you. I have been coming here every day for weeks hoping you would come. I didn’t want to go to your grandmother’s house. I thought she might kill me anyway and I would deserve no less. But I thought if you came here, then maybe you still loved me, maybe you could forgive what I did at the track…”
“But af-after you said… You said all of those things…” She looked at me angrily.
“Of course, I didn’t say those things! That was Mr. Suit who kept putting out denial statements against my will and took my phone away. I fired him after I made him send you your money. I would never say those things about you, Alexa. How could you think that?!”
I look at her with incredulity.
“Okay, so I understand why you might think I said them. I know what I said about you to the cameras and I will regret that moment and the pain that it caused you for the rest of eternity. But I didn’t continue denying you. Us. I haven’t been able to function without you. I haven’t left our penthouse. I know the media says I went back to the US, but it isn’t true. I have been there the whole time. I have stalked you. I have you on google alerts, I tracked your air pods. I am crazy, I know. I am a crazy woman. You can end this if you want. I won’t blame you at all. But I have to tell you. I have to tell you that I have never felt this way for anyone. I don’t want to spend another day without you. Not another moment. I love you, Alexa Sharpe. And, I’m ready to come out to the world. I am so sorry for what I said and did to us. I’m so sorry for what I did to you. If you give us another chance, this time it is real and forever. I promise you that. No hiding. No secrets. No contracts.”
“No contract for love?”
She shakes her head and her eyes are full of hope.
I’m so angry with her and I can’t believe she let me feel this way for weeks. Why she didn’t she come to me sooner? There is so much we need to talk about. So much we need to work through. So much that needs to change.
But it also doesn’t matter. Not really. I know we will find a way.
“I love you, Dahlia, my butterfly.”
And as I feel her lips against mine, my heart and head are finally on the same page once more.
I had spent so long hoping for a happy ending. But little did I know that when it came, it would be just the beginning.
The End
Epilogue
5 Years later
Life has a funny way of working out. From the moment Dahlia kissed me at the lake, my life took on another change. Well, it was already changing thanks to my newly acquired gold medal and world record, but now it was a step into the spotlight.
I forgave Dahlia for her words that broke me. We all fuck up sometimes and she has spent her whole life denying her sexuality and hiding huge parts of herself. She reacted to the press questions like a hunted animal. She used her acting skills to say what she had been trained forever to say. Denial.
She doesn’t deny any more. She embraces our love in every way and we are very open about it.
Luckily, I am boring and Dahlia’s new manager, Giselle, who I instantly adored, wasted no time in telling our story to the world. The real story.
She wiped away all the bad practices of Mr. Suit and before you knew it, the public was eating out of Dahlia's palm again, only this time it was real and I think that made it better for everyone. Being a lesbian actress was not such a terrible thing anymore as it was all those years ago for Dahlia in the movie industry. Okay, a Christian Southern gay woman… a little more PR needed, but I was wholesome as Giselle liked to put it. My life was something people warmed to, they saw me and Grandmama, how hard I had worked in my career, and how I had now made this beautiful woman happy and they came round to the idea.
They just didn’t know the things we got up to in the bedroom. Then again, they would probably like that, too.
As for me, I got my big chance and went to the Olympics to represent Great Britain the following year. I was on the form of my life and I was never in doubt that I would win there. I went into the final as the favorite. I ran my own race and I won the Olympic gold medal, almost easily, and felt overwhelmed and at peace all at the same time.
For so many years, I had thought I would never quite be good enough. I had always been the one who finished 8th, 5th, sometimes even squeezed a bronze medal. I had almost accepted that, that I was the ‘nearly’ runner. The one that was close, but never quite close enough.
I’ll never know exactly what made the difference to my times. I actually think it was Dahlia. In loving Dahlia, I had found a fierce passion inside of me that translated to my racing. I suddenly had a harder edge to me that came with the fullness with which I was experiencing the rest of my life.
Even in the time I lost Dahlia, I was feeling extremes of emotions I never thought possible and I poured all that feeling into racing.
Grandmama is still alive and mostly doing well. We spend a lot of time together when I am in London.
