Back To You | complete

Chapter 45| Back To You

I didn't have a single idea he was going through all that emotional turmoil alone. Some girlfriend I was.

"Why didn't you say anything?" I asked. He didn't reply. I sighed. I felt the need to explain my side. "Kai, I didn't do all of that anymore because I felt secure in our relationship." I urged him to meet my eyes. I needed him to know that I meant it. His brown orbs connected with mine, a pool of turbulent remorse. "I knew you loved me and I was sure I was in love with you. I wasn't afraid of losing you. It was more than a crush. We had been dating for three years, babe. I felt that we didn't have to spend every second together like those jocks and their new girlfriends did. We had a better relationship than that. We had love."

"I get that now," he fretted. His eyes shined as he looked away again. "I just wish I'd known that then so that I wouldn't have fucked up six years of our lives."

"Better late than never, hun?" I joked lightly. He didn't crack even a small smile and I hastened to take it back, "Sorry."

He remained silent, staring at our hands in his lap.

"I love you," I said softly.

He squeezed my hand reassuringly. "I love you too, mon amour."

We sat in silence for a while, soaking up this information.

"What about when you came to my house that day?" I broke it. "Why didn't you tell me all of this?"

"I was . . . ashamed of all this," he worded. "I felt as if I didn't deserve you . . . " he trailed off. I didn't speak, sensing he had more to say. I tried not to protest when he extracted his hand from mine slowly and ran it through his hair. "I've always valued trust in a relationship. After love, that's what I hold as the most important. I believe that it's the glue that keeps everything together.

"When you ran away like that that day . . . the way I saw your heart break . . . It was too much. When I came to your house the next morning and you still seemed to believe that I had cheated on you . . . which technically I had. But . . . urgh."

He shook his head and took a deep breath before he continued.

" . . . I thought that I had lost your trust, or perhaps I had failed to ever gain it in the first place. And, I don't know, I just couldn't put you through a relationship with me like that where you would constantly worry. How could you possibly be happy if every time you would see me with another girl you would be worried about our relationship? I knew I was insecure. And I would be in a college six hours away for four years. That would be just . . . cruel. To the both of us."

I closed my eyes. I couldn't believe it. All this because we couldn't understand each other. Our misunderstandings. Our lack of communication. One thought the other didn't love them anymore and the other thought that their partner was a cheater. How idiotic.

My fingers found their way back to the ring. It felt as natural as breathing. As if there had never been a tan line there that I would stare at in haunting sorrow. As if it never felt light and incomplete. As if the tan line never slowly faded away, taking more and more of me away with it every day.

I felt his hands on my face, brushing away the wetness my brain had otherwise refused to register. I leaned into his touch almost as a reflex.

"And that's why you walked away this time, too," I mumbled hoarsely, connecting the dots. "You thought I didn't trust you and yo-"

I couldn't continue. My mind couldn't stop thinking about how I might possibly have had to spend my entire life without him had Josh not opened his mouth. A lifetime full of loneliness. A lifetime of trying to heal and fill Kai's absence. A lifetime of trying to find my way without him.