Lizzie hurried through the hallways, taking the fastest route out of the school. She had to get back to her dad’s apartment. She had to find Landon. She had to -
She didn’t even make it to the door before she smacked into someone in her rush.
“Sorry -” She stopped when she saw who it was. Landon looked down at her, his hands still on her arms from where he’d stopped her from falling. She blinked a few times. “Hi.”
For a moment, she couldn’t say anything else. She had planned on using the trip from the Salvatore School to the apartment building to plan out what to say, how to explain what she needed to explain.
Now, she had to come up with something on the spot. “Hi. I was - I was just coming to see you.”
“You better have been.” His voice wasn’t exactly angry, but it wasn’t friendly either. It was … guarded.
Lizzie twisted her hands together. “I have some explaining to do.”
“That’s the understatement of the year.” Landon guided her to a pair of chairs on the edge of the hallway.
Lizzie sighed. There were too many quasi-reunions back-to-back. She was exhausted already.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “That’s … I’ve said that a hundred times in the last hour, but I mean it. Really. I’m sorry.”
Landon opened his mouth to say something, but Lizzie kept going.
“And I know your next question is ‘why’ and I’ve been thinking about that a lot too, even before today, and the long answer short is because I was wrong. I thought everyone was better off without me, but I was an idiot. A hypocritical idiot, because I already went through this with Hope when she took her own dive into Malivore’s murky depths. And apparently, I didn’t learn my lesson, but I have now. I promise. I … Yeah. I’m just sorry.”
Landon smiled. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“No, but I do.” Lizzie reached across the tiny space between them, grabbing his hands in hers. “Because I am sorry, and apologizing is kind of my thing.”
Landon laughed a little. “I’ve noticed.”
“And I … a tiny, tiny part because most of it was my raging inferiority complex, but a teeny part of me thought that maybe … if I brought everyone’s memories back - if I brought your memories back - that we … I mean, you …” Lizzie couldn’t quite find a string of words that didn’t make her want to crawl into a hole in the earth until she died of embarrassment.
“That things would change?” Landon guessed.
Lizzie’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Between us, yeah.”
“There’s … an us?” An eyebrow rose on Landon’s inquisitive face.
“I thought there might be an us.” For a moment, Lizzie let herself feel the possibility. The possibility of someone loving her the way everyone loved her sister. And then she let reality back in. “But there definitely was not an us before all of this.”
“No,” Landon agreed. “No, there definitely wasn’t.”
Lizzie took her hands back, blinking tears away. She wasn’t going to cry in front of him. She stood. “So, there’s definitely no us now.”
Landon caught her arm as she turned to leave. “Now, I didn’t say that.”
Lizzie spun back around, ready to meet his eye, but instead, his lips met hers. Definitely us behavior. And Lizzie didn’t mind. She couldn’t even imagine what he was thinking or how he had come to the conclusion that there could be an us between the two of them after he got his memories back, but she wasn’t going to question it. For once, she was just going to enjoy something.
He pulled back too soon. “There’s definitely an us now.”
“Good to know.”
She probably would’ve leaned in for a second kiss if someone hadn’t cleared their throat at the end of the hallway. She jumped back guiltily, almost not daring to meet Hope’s eye.
“There’s something we’d like to show you,” she said. She stepped aside and motioned for the two of them to follow her.
YOU ARE READING
Without Me
FanfictionLizzie's dreams of being a superhero had gotten her into messy situations before, but nothing like this. She sacrificed her life during the final showdown with Malivore but what life she sacrificed wasn't what she was expecting.
