Ghost Of You | cth

25. Fall More In Love Every Day

With her eyes forced to look no where but at me she says, "Us."

I remove my finger and instead intertwine our hands together, sensing she's nervous. I want to do everything I can to ease her anxiousness over this subject. We've gotten through this once before, we can do it again.

"Where do we go from here?" She asks.

"Well do you wanna be with me?" I ask her praying the answer is what I want to hear.

"I do want to be with you Calum,"

"But?" I ask sensing there's something she isn't telling me.

I squeeze her hand, begging for an answer. "I'm just not sure if you would want to be with me." Her response takes me aback. What does she mean by this? Have I not been straight forward enough?

"What do you mean?" I question.

She removes her hand and uses it to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, "I mean, after all I've put you through to finally get to this point. You still want to be with me?"

"Its not what you've put me through, it's what we've both gone through together." I correct, adamant on not changing my mind.  I place my hands on her cheeks, lightly stroking my thumb over them.

"But what if I end up hurting you in the future?" I've always know that Paige is afraid of relationships because of her experiences growing up, I just never knew it would take this much persuading. Especially because Paige and I have already gone through this once before.

"It'll all be worth it just to say I had the privilege of loving you."

It makes me feel terrible for her knowing that she won't allow herself to be happy and give in to what she wants. I would do anything it takes for her to believe that she deserves this relationship.

Her frown breaks into a smile and suddenly she's wrapping her arms around my neck and pulling herself as close to me as possible. I reciprocate the hug and place a hand on the back of her head, stroking through her messy blonde hair.

"I can't allow myself to be unfair to you again." She mumbles into my neck, squeezing me tighter.

"The only unfair thing you could do is not be with me." I say honestly. She pulls her head back to look at me smiling for a moment before kissing me.

This kiss isn't like any other we've ever shared before. This time it's Paige promising to be with me and give up the fight. We both deserve to be happy together. We're the only two people on earth that know the other like the back of our hands.

We know how to overcome an argument as stupid as they may be, we know how to make the other smile when they cry, we understand what it's like to go through something traumatic but find beauty in it within each other.

It's a beautiful thing that we share and I'll never give it up, no matter how painful it may be.

Paige presses her lips against mine once more before we are disrupted by the sound of knocking on the door. She quickly moves away from me and stands up from the bed in a hurry to put a robe on and cover her body. "Just a second!" She yells.

"Paige let me in," Vanessa says knocking again. "I forgot my key!"

She looks at me in a panic, her eyes urging me to hurry up and put my clothes on. I do so as quickly as possible and Paige rushes inside the bathroom to soothe out her hair as best she can.

I am in no way hurt that Paige is trying to hide the evidence of us being together, what person wants their best friend to find out the couple she's been rooting for forever is finally together after all these years, in this way?