Summer Blue

Chapter Thirty-Seven

'Picked up a new habit Darlin?' Blue's gentle tone cut into the quiet solitude of our surroundings, and I turned in his direction. He was sitting there with his guitar on his lap, bathed in the soft glow of patio lights as my gaze found him with a familiarity that sent shivers down my spine. The years seemed to melt away, and for a moment, we were just kids again, His fingers resting against the strings and just that sight right there had my heart melting before crumpling at the loss of seeing such a sight on the regular. God, it was just like all those times he had sat on my porch swing with me as we both played for one another and that specific guitar he held, Melody, she was the bloody thing that entwined my soul with his when we were young.

'Life will do that to a person.' I muttered before turning away from him, leaning my elbows onto the railing of the patio as I took another drag of my cigarette, exhaling a plume of smoke into the night. The sound of his light movements had me all but begging and pleading for him not to do what I knew he was about to do. Please don't come to me, please don't talk to me, please because I didn't have any fight left in me. I had fought too much over the years that I was afraid he was going to want to rehash our last encounters from three bloody years ago.

'Do you want to know a truth Darlin?' He asked over my shoulder, he wasn't touching me, but my body was highly aware that he was standing behind me. it took a sharp inhale of my cigarette to steady my composure, I wasn't going to break so easily. God how was it even possible that he was still a weakness for me after all these years?

'What are you doing Blue?' I turned to face him, to try and decipher if he held anything in his facial expression. He was calm, curious even but what was killing me was the warmth in his eyes as he looked back at me.

'I'm checking if you're ok.' He answered in a soft tone, one filled with sincerity. He didn't want to fight with me either, it was written all over him.

'I'm fine.' I lied, my Uncle just died, and I was forced to face the boy I fell in love with only this time he was no longer that nineteen-year-old boy but a fully grown man.

'Are you sure?' He asked reaching out and taking hold of my hand as he pulled it up into the space between us, his remaining hand gently and as if in slow motion tugged the sleeve of my top up, his eyes roaming over every inch of the skin on my arm as he took in the faded bruises that still hadn't left my skin. I bit down on the inside of my cheek in an attempt to halt my panic. I wasn't afraid to admit what had happened or had been happening up until three weeks ago, at least I wasn't afraid anymore.

'Fuck.' He muttered, his tone was soft yet passive and his reaction was one of confirmation as if he had known about what he was to see before he had seen it. 'Your Uncle said they would be there but fuck I didn't want to believe it.' He let out softly, his eyes not moving from the fingerprints and bruises of a beating that were etched into my skin.

'Uncle Wade told you?' I asked, uncertain of how I was to feel about that. Uncle Wade had promised me that he wasn't going to tell anyone, that he wasn't going to do anything, and let me handle it, and I did, I did handle it.

'Was in the damn letter Darlin.' He lifted his gaze from my arm to my eyes and so much swirled within them. Pain, sadness, anger, torment, and God knows what else. 'That and the knowledge that you haven't played the guitar in three years.'

'My uncle shouldn't have done that.' I pulled my arm from his soft grasp as I pushed my sleeve back down. 'He shouldn't have told you my business.'

'Oh, he should have Sage, if anyone shouldn't have done something it was the fucker that put these bruises on you.' Blue fired back, again his tone was soft, and it didn't match the tension that was set in his jaw.

'I'm not having this conversation with you Blue.' I shook my head, turning my back on him as I fished out another cigarette from my pocket because my previous one had burnt out. I can't have this conversation with him. How could I? How could I talk to my first love about how after he had broken my heart I'd run straight into the arms of an abusive man?