Sweet Fall (Sweet Home #2)(87)

I love you deeply, whole-heartedly, without hesitation, free of condition.

I have fallen in love with you. The broken boy who has only ever known trouble and strife. Yet the broken boy who managed to put this broken girl back together, at least for a while.

I wasn’t always this broken. As a child, my life was happy. It was endless days of summer and spring. But on one of those days, while playing carefree amongst the daisies, a deep freeze swooped in unannounced, robbing everything bright of its light. Then winter thawed and fall leaves began to sprout. But the sun never fully came back. Days and days would be spent lost in dreary overcast, until… until gradually, sunbeams began to break up the blanket of gray and set forth its healing rays. Those healing rays were you.

For a time, the sun shone every day. Birds would chirp and time would be spent lounging in the heat, content basking in its glow.

But again, the unrelenting winter returned, bringing days of forever night, and with it, all loss of hope.

For the sun would never shine again, and without it, everything withers and dies… until there is nothing, nothing but an empty desert of pain.

We didn’t last. Lord knows we didn’t last. We broke down at the most critical hour, and my heart fragmented into pieces. I have spiraled down a deep, dark well, no hope of rescue.

For a time, with you by my side, I was normal. For a time, with you by my side, I felt beautiful. But that time is up. That time is no more. The last grain of sand has fallen in the hourglass that is my resistance to the voice, and I’m choosing to finally let go.

It happened so gradually that I didn’t even know I was back in the darkness until I lost my way, completely alone, no light to be my guide—no you to lead the way.

I thought I was healed, in a better place—a healthier place—but I was wrong. I know you’ll eventually blame yourself for all of this, but you were my reason to hold on as long as I did. My reason to fight the unbeatable battle.

At least for a while.

Oh, how I wish I had met you before.

I wish I had known you then. Maybe I would’ve fought harder against the voice in my mind. Maybe things wouldn’t have spun so out of control.

I would’ve had you. Only you make me strong.

If I had met you before, maybe you could have intercepted the dark path I was destined to follow with your light. Maybe we could have been each other’s guide. Holding tight to one another against the hurricane that is our lives.

But you were too late, and I grow too tired.

Too tired to keep on fighting for this empty vessel I call a life, a life of desolation now it’s void of you.

If I could go back in time, I would find you. I would search the world to seek you out and make you fall in love with me once more. I would need you, and you would need me, and all the pain, all the demons we harbor deep inside, would have disappeared before they had a chance to take root. And all the scars we have endured and worn with shame, would never have had a chance to strike.

But I’m lost without you.

I can’t breathe without you.

Without you here, all I can do is fall…





Hands shaking, I reread the entry over and over with daggers striking unrelenting at my heart. I never knew… I never knew she felt like this…

How could I have left her? I was so wrong, so f*ckin’ wrong, and, by doing so, I’d ruined her. The piece of trash that I was had ruined everything for her.

Standing, I let my feet take me back to Lexi’s room, and I quietly opened the door. “All I Need” by Within Temptation was playing from the speakers—she loved this song. I watched as the chorus played out and a tear rolled down Lexi’s pale and sallow cheek. A part of my heart lurched to life. That was the first reaction she’d had in all the days I’d been sitting by her bed.

Clutching the journal to my chest, I silently backed out of the room, snatching a pen from the nurse’s station, and made my way back to the family room, finding a fresh page, putting pen to paper.





Chapter Twenty-Seven

Lexi


I couldn’t believe I was back here again. I couldn’t believe I was back in this room. Memories of back then invaded my mind… I was only sixteen…





I stared at the large generic clock ticking on the wall in the small sterile office, feeling three sets of eyes on me.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…

I didn’t look their way. What was the point? They didn’t understand. No one did.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…

“Lexi? Are you listening to Dr. Lund?” my momma asked, her voice curt, or was it desolate? I couldn’t tell anymore. Was beyond caring.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Keep calm. They cannot change what you will not let them change, the voice assured me, and I felt myself relax.

Keep strong, Lexington. You know what is best. It is just a few more pounds. Listen to them and they will make sure you fail. You must not fail. You have come this far. Feel me. Trust me. Trust how good I make you look. Feel me in your mind, guiding you to perfection, the voice pushed and took back control.

“Lexi!” my momma snapped.

I dragged my head away from watching the black second hand on its hypnotizing circle, dancing starkly against the white plastic of the clock face on a snow-white painted wall.

“Lexi, you’re being pulled out of high school, at sixteen! All the cheerleading, the gymnastics, the dance classes stop. Your cheer scholarship to Oklahoma State has gone, revoked and given to someone else. It’s all gone! Are you even listening to this? All your dreams. Everything you’ve worked so hard for, for years, has gone!”