Never Knew I Needed (Chaelisa)

Chapter 18

After, I lay on my side, my head propped in my hand and I just watch her.

She's asleep, her face peaceful and serene and I feel my lungs taking in a deep, unsteady breath as my eyes wander down her body, down to where the sheet stops, just below my favorite dimples in her back, back up the dip in her spine and to her blonde hair, tousled and scattered across her back and the pillow.

She really is painfully beautiful. An angel, in fact, and I really don't know how I got this lucky.

I'm reaching over and tracing a fingertip over the notches in her spine before I can stop myself, admiring my own fingers reverently making their way over her skin, taking her in, mapping her out, worshiping her. My touch moves higher and higher, my breath hitching when she stirs beneath my touch but she doesn't wake, and so I press my palm down against her, letting it drift up and down, over and over, until I'm forced to move my hand and graze down her ribs, my thumb tracing the side of her breast, just to touch somewhere I haven't.

It's not a sexual action, and I don't feel heat build within my groin at it either because I’m not staring at her like she's a piece of meat; I'm staring at her like she's the best thing that's ever existed. Actually, I honestly think she might be.

The thought makes something curdle within me; it's not quite fear, but it's not quite uncertainty or confusion, either, and I stop my hands movements, taking my bottom lip between my teeth as my eyes trace over her because I realize it now. I think I've known for a while, if I'm honest.

The signs have all been there, and the realizations have all come, intermittently admittedly, but they've all come none-the-less; but it's only when I'm lying here, drinking in the sight of her and listening to my own body react at the sight of her — the blood rush in my ears, my heart pick up its pace and my touch quiver above her skin — that I really, truly acknowledge it for the first time.

I'm falling in love with her.

It scares me in a way I'm not privy to, because the fear I feel isn't one I'd get from a horror movie, or from remembering that I forgot to switch the stove off at home, it's a fear that I can feel creeping through my bones, chilling me to my very core. It's a fear that I know is going to take a hold of me and change the way I think, I feel, I act, because it's not something I can get over with some therapy or by facing it.

Because it's the fear that I'm going to fall in love with someone who might not love me back.

It's the fear that I'm going to give myself to someone fully, wholeheartedly, and not receive anything in return.

It's the fear that I'm no longer going to just be myself, to own myself, because I'm going to give my heart, a vital part of my being, my soul, my life, to someone else.

And it's not like I don't trust Rosé because I do; I'd trust her with anything, but I never wanted to fall for my best friend.

I've read the books, I've heard the stories, I've seen the movies, I know what comes of it — heartbreak, pain and an eternal ache that may fade with time, but will never really go away. I know what the majority of the results are, and I feel hopeless because there's absolutely nothing I can do about it; nothing I can do to stop it because I'm already free-falling without a parachute.

Though you suppose I never really had control over it. It was just so... easy to fall in love with my best friend when my best friend was Rosé. It was just so simple, so effortless to fall in love with her because if I really ask myself, she's everything I need and more.

She's everything I'm going to want, ever going to need, and that scares the crap out of me.

Because it means that there's more for me to lose.