Page 122 of All That We Never Were

“Thank you for this,” I whispered.

Blair stretched her hand back to grab mine. I squeezed it between my fingers, as in the old days, as though we were out on one of our wild late-night adventures. I wanted to laugh, more from the nerves that were making a mess of my stomach than from anything else. I took a deep breath when Kevin parked out front.

“No rush. We’ll be here waiting for you.”

I said goodbye to them and walked around the house to the back porch. I saw him before I made it there. When I saw his eyes, I grew tense, because that stare wasn’t the one I’d known in those last days we spent together. It was different, colder, more distant, vaguer. I walked up the steps. Axel was leaning on the railing with a cigarette in his hand. He put it out before looking me over slowly from head to toe. I shook.

107

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Axel

Leah hesitated, but a second later she took off running toward me and hugged me, clutching my body, killing me a little inside. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, but it was a mistake, because that only made her scent envelop me. I made the biggest effort of my life when I grabbed her shoulders and pushed her away softly.

“What’s happening? Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

I rubbed my chin. I didn’t know what the fuck to say, I didn’t know how to deal with that, and all I could do was avoid looking at her, concentrating on anything else on the porch, because the idea that this would be our last memory together was so sad, and it seemed to stain everything else.

“Axel, why won’t you look at me?”

Because I can’t! I wanted to scream, but I knew I couldn’t run away. I had tried it, the way I had with other things that were too much for me, as if some part of me were determined to ignore the advice I gave everyone else. Finally I looked up. And she was so precious…angry, but full of emotions that seemed to overflow in her eyes. Trembling, but standing there before me, not stepping back. Brave.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“No, no, no…”

I looked down. She ran her hands across my jaw and lifted it up. If there was ever a moment in my life when my heart broke, that was it, the instant when Leah slipped her fingertips over the bruises on my right cheek and my busted lip. I closed my eyes. And I fucked up again. I let her stand on tiptoe and cover my mouth with hers in a frightened, tremulous kiss. I grunted when she squeezed against me. Her hips pressed into mine. Her arms around my neck. Her tongue with its taste of strawberry and everything she had symbolized in my life: breaking with routine, opening up to another person, intense, vibrant color, nights under the stars, moments we had lived in that house that would be ours alone forever…

“Leah, wait.” I pushed her away slowly.

Fuck. I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t…

“Stop looking at me like that. Stop looking at me as if this was a goodbye. Don’t you love me? You told me…you told me we all live in a yellow submarine.” Her voice broke, and I bit my lip, holding back.

“Of course I love you. But this can’t be.”

“You’re not being serious.” She brought a hand to her mouth, and I watched her erase the kiss that we had just given each other, taking it away in her fingers.

I came close to her. Every inch that separated her body from mine was fucking torture. And when I thought of how far apart we would be after that, I wanted to hold her until she begged me to stop.

In another life, at another time, I would have…

“Listen to me, Leah. I don’t want to come between you and your brother, because I know you, and I know you’ll end up regretting it.”

“That won’t happen. I’ll work it out with him. I just need time, Axel.”

I continued because I had no other choice but to continue. “And you’re young, you’re going to go to college, and you need to enjoy that time without anyone tying you down, without me, without this fucked-up situation.” I was suffocating as I watched her eyes grow damp. “Grow, live, like I did in those days. Meet guys, have fun, be happy, babe. I can’t give you all that.”

“Are you suggesting I go out with other people?” She held my eyes, trembling, crying, with a grimace of incredulity.

And I…I wanted to die, because the very idea of someone else’s lips touching hers, other hands holding her…

“Axel, tell me you’re not being serious. Tell me this was a mistake and we’ll start over from zero. Come on, look at me, please.”

I took a step back when she tried to touch me. “It was a mistake, Leah. That’s what I want to say.”

She brought a hand to her chest. Her cheeks were coated in tears, and this time, I couldn’t wipe them away. I had gotten so used to holding her up when she was in pain in those months, helping her to channel it, to face it, to accept it…and now I was the source of her pain.

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