Still Not Over You(18)

That’s it.

Done.

That final word breaks me.

That word sends me stumbling away half-blind, tumbling out onto the sidewalk, fleeing home in a shaken stupor.

I don’t look back. I don’t want to see him.

I don’t want to see the hate in his eyes again, when he looks at me.

But it’s my last memory of him.

A few days later he ships out for the Army. I don’t even get to see him one last time before he’s gone. Just a hole in my life, and I don’t realize how big a space he’d occupied until it’s empty.

I’m not ashamed to admit I want him back. I miss my friend.

I want to talk to him, to tell him how much his words hurt me, to find some way back to normal. I even write to him – so many times, so many letters. I keep writing through my freshman year at college, sacrificing nights I should be out with friends or exploring myself. I give them up to pen him at least a dozen apologies and explanations, painstakingly crafted for days, with long, restless breaks in between buried in term papers and internships.

Landon never writes back.

Because he’s done, he said.

And clearly, he means it.





*



Present Day





It shouldn’t still hurt this much.

What happened to time healing all wounds?

My eyes are dry, but burning. How long have I been out here, losing myself in the past?

The ocean breeze tastes like sunset, and the sky is turning purple on the horizon, tinged with a touch of orange as the sun dips down like it might just set the ocean aflame. My chest is hollow. Aching.

It’s awful. It’s still so awful, like I’m that girl again, and he just ripped out my stitches, reminding me how useless I am and always will be. How I don't fit into his life, and never did.

Reminding me that he could have blood on his hands, and for some insane reason, I’ve kept his secrets all these years.

I don’t know if I want to know if he was really able to go through with it.

Hell, I know I don't want to find out if he did.

I feel too out in the open, right now. Too exposed. Vulnerable.

I don’t want to run into him, and I know he’s in the house somewhere, rattling around and getting ready to leave for Sonoma in the morning. I risk a glance over my shoulder, then escape to my room.

One of the cats – Velvet, I think, still not sure after he’d tersely flung names at me a few hours ago – trails after me, a sweet blue-gray comfort twining around my ankles.

While the guest room is spacious, right now it just feels like more emptiness for me to rattle around in.

I hate feeling like a loose end. I should sit down, write, but I don’t think I could even manage to sit still. I’m not exactly a Type A personality.

I’m more like Type ADHD, bouncing between wild periods of hyperactive multitasking productivity and long inert daydreaming sessions. When you catch me somewhere in between, it’s nothing but disquiet.

What I like to call 'creative procrastinating.'

I need to do something to feel better right now, but my brain’s still trapped in the dream.

Drifting to the bedroom window, drawn by the colors of the sunset, I let my eyes steal a little balm for my soul from the landscape. California sunsets are like pastel fires and dripping watercolors blended together, an arresting sight that helps take my mind off the lingering ache in my chest.

But the ache becomes a knife stabbing me as I catch motion on the beach again.

Landon.

He’s standing on the sand, a change of clothes stacked on a beach towel close by. Only this time, he’s naked. Brazenly, shamelessly nude.

Gorgeous, too, the setting sunlight gilding every edge of him until I could trace the poetry of his sculpted body in lines of glowing, gleaming light. His tattoos shape him, as if they’re arcane markings binding this demon into the shape of a man.

From his broad, square shoulders to the trim line of his hips to the sinfully decadent dip of his Hercules crest, he’s breathtaking. If he turns around, I just might die. If I see that secret part of him and start imagining all the terrible, wonderful, and wonderfully terrible things his cock can do to me...

No. Kenna, no, I tell myself.

Don't. Even. Go. There.

But my eyes do. It’s like watching a wildcat move as he forges into the powerful push and pull of the waves. Mercifully before I catch a glimpse of everything.

I'm transfixed. Drunk. Watching all that compact, tight, dense muscle, working and flowing together in this brutally enchanting machine fueled by raw, primal masculinity.

Everything hurts.

Everything I am.

I've been horny before, like any red blooded woman, but this? It's on another level.

I'm suffocating with the force of this longing; my whole body prickles with the craving, the need, the wetness that has me pinching my thighs shut, my lips pulsing, my heart beating far too hard.

I’m all raw edges, and I don’t know what I need more.

Landon’s touch, or his forgiveness.

God. It really was stupid to ever come here, wasn't it? To ever think this was a good idea.

I can’t go back in time and change what happened half a decade ago. I can’t take back finding his journal, snooping, and cornering him like an injured animal.