On The Run: Part Two

Chapter Twenty-Eight - "Delayed Gratification"

Slowly, I walked up to the seats behind Fitch, and slipped in next to a guy who looked like one of those guys from the skate park. Maybe he was. It was Fitch after all; he had quite a lot of friends.

“Um, yeah sorry. So you heard the noise?” Sarah asked, turning back to the witness stand. Barely, as she glanced back at me.

Fitch’s eyes were still trained on me, his surprise evident. He looked like he wasn’t sure whether to be happy or shocked.

Then, I was grinning. I couldn’t help myself. Just seeing him had shot my happiness up about a hundred levels. I knew this was what I’d been missing these past few months, but I never realized that getting an inch of him would feel as good as it did.

“Hi,” I mouthed with a wink.

Then, he grinned, and it was beautiful. I barely took notice of the prosecutor staring my way curiously.

“Hi,” he whispered back, his eyes holding a sincere look.

The words of his letter were still playing over in my head.

I know you’re probably really hurt, and I just want you to know that however you feel, I feel like that too. But also like my head is being rammed into a wall a hundred times and my heart is being shoved through a shredder, and the pain just won’t stop.

I find that it scares me, not being with you. Does that make me pathetic? I’m writing this and imagining a time when I won’t wake up next to you, and that alone makes me want to hold you; I want to talk to you; I want to see you. So I imagine that if it actually happened, I’d feel all those things, and more.

Does that make you hurt a little less? Does it make you see just how much I adore you?

Forget the fact that you’re beautiful. When you talk, I can’t help but listen. You make my every hair stand on end when you touch me. It’s like magic – you and me. SO far-fetched and impossible, yet somehow it’s happening.

You and me are forever, Chloe. We may not be together right now, but unless I am dead – and even if I am, I can’t totally rule this out – I will do absolutely everything I can and everything I’m not allowed to do to have you back in my arms one more time.

I love you. And lately, I feel like saying that just isn’t enough. It doesn’t grasp the entirety of my feelings for you. I’m in love. I’m terrified of never having you. I’m in awe of you. I’m absolutely in shock that you’re actually with me – voluntarily.

I know you always snort when I say this, but I fell in love with you the moment I saw you sitting in the darkness of a pick-up truck with a book called ‘Tort’s.’ You didn’t see me, but I stopped and you were there and you were beautiful and like that lighthouse in the distance that you never imagined would come any closer.

Do you believe me now?

That was only a section. There were six pages, front and back – he told me about himself; everything there was to know. From his deceased biological mother to his incarcerated father to moving in with the Jacksons to his time in remand school and to the crazy sociopathic friend, all the way to the day we met. Everything.

If it was possible, I fell in love all over again with him. It was just so open. He was baring it all and saying, can you still love me? Do you still love me?

I was reminded of our song as he glanced back at me:

Girl, I say, if only life would lean our way,

Well, you and me, we'd run away to be wherever our adventure waits,

And time would be a distant memory, nobody could tell us to stay,