Broken Until Him

Chapter 32 ~ Pieces

‘Our life is a gigantic puzzle, a hundred million tiny pieces we have to put together one by one until the day we die. Each piece represent a moment in our life, a feeling, a word, an action. Whether the piece is important or not does not matter, they still add up to the pile we have to assemble to make sense of a bigger part of the puzzle.

And sometimes, we don't know the meaning behind a piece until we find the matching one. There will always be pieces that you don't want to assemble to the rest of the puzzle, pieces you'll find a hard time matching. But no matter how hard it can be, giving up on you masterpiece is the worst thing you could ever do.

Sure, you will never see the puzzle completed, no one ever completes it simply because life happens and it is always a bit messy when it ends, even if you think you had everything figured out. So gather yourself and put as many pieces together as you can, you can still get a good look at the unfinished picture you created and get some pride out of accomplishing so much, of connecting so many pieces.

But most of all, pride for not giving up on those difficult pieces you had a hard time matching.’

"Hey, Jade!" Nathan calls after me but I keep walking towards the bus stop, turning up the volume so that the music flowing through my headphones drown his voice.

We’ve been quite distant lately. He has had a lot of things to deal with that he won’t talk about. Actually, I didn't asked what it was. I was too busy trying to take in everything that has happened in the past couple of days, including the fact that my boyfriend knew about everything and hid it from me. I don’t think I’m mad at him. To be honest I’m more disappointed than angry. I trusted him with my life and now I regret it, maybe if we had taken things slower I would have known about the secrets sooner, before I utterly and madly fell for him. It would have probably not hurt that much, maybe I would have been able to call things off. But right now, I'm not sure I have it in me.

“What’s wrong?” Nathan asks when he finally reaches me, taking the headphones out of my ears.

I almost want to run. Actually, I was already sort of running/walking fast to the bus stop, but for my defense, it’s raining really hard. Nathan grabs my left wrist gently to turn me around. He doesn’t seem to mind the rain. He is completely soaked and he manages to be even more handsome with drops running down his face. My eyes quickly meet his before I drop my gaze to the ground but this split second was enough for me to catch worry in them. I can’t look him in the eyes without it confusing me, and I definitely don’t need this right now.

“Can we please do this another day? I have to help Hannah pack before she leaves with her mom to the airport,” I try to keep my voice steady and firm as I take a step back to put more distance between us.

“Do what?” he asks, his arm falling to his side.

“Nevermind, see you tomorrow,” I say with a forced smile and turn around, already walking back to the bus stop and hoping he will, for once, let it go.

“No, tell me,” he yells as he takes big steps to reach me and walk by my side, his arm brushing against mine. “Come on, I’ll drive you back home,” he adds, pointing to his car parked a couple of cars away from us.

Before I can give it a thought, his arm his around my shoulders and we both walk in the direction of his car. Once we’re both inside, away from the rain, Nathan turns toward me, his left hand on the steering wheel and the other one grabbing mine.

“You know you can tell me everything, right?” he says calmly though I can hear the tension in his voice.

“I wish you would feel the same way with me,” I mutter, dropping my chin to look at my knees.