and then you left // cth

chapter 40: change

"Say it," he begs, and I remember the night he told me how to play guitar, the night he took me to Passion Street. I remember the way he cared for me when I first got here and knew nobody and nothing but darkness, and he welcomed me with his arms wide open. He was so perfect, and so beautiful, and so kind. He would never break my heart, I know that. Not like Calum did.

But the real reason Luke could never break my heart because it will never be his to break. I would never give it to him in the first place.

Headlights approach our street, as the car turns onto it. The lights are blinding- he's got his brights on. He'd always accidentally turn them on, not knowing. And no matter how many times I told him, he never understood why they shouldn't be on- how the lights can blind other drivers and cause an accident.

He never understood that his actions had repercussions, that his words had meaning to people other than just him, or me.

The car screeches to a stop just a house away from us, and the driver door flies open. I stop breathing.

"Lex!" Calum screams, but I don't turn my head to look at him just yet.

"I love Calum," I tell Luke with a confidence bursting at the seams. "I always have and I always will."

And then, because I don't want to be there while Luke's heart breaks in two, I turn and run into Calum's arms, and everything is okay again.

...
calum

I am lying in bed, allowing the darkness to surround me as the night passes much to slowly. My phone lies next to me on my nightstand, and it begs me to call Alexis. It takes everything in me not to, but I am so bad for her. And she knows it, even if she would never do anything about it.

Maybe she didn't know this at first, when we first met. She didn't know what she was calling for. But when I love, I love completely and with my entire being. There is nothing in me that does not love her. I'm usually all out, uninterested. But if you are the right person, I'm all in- no questions asked.

There were too many promises between us, each so easy to break. And maybe this was the thing that broke us apart- the reason we struggled so much to hold on to each other. We should have just been us, built the relationship on passion and logistics. Instead, both of us felt so unsteady in this world and we tried to secure ourselves with lists of things we knew we could never do. Like skip college and run away together. It's almost funny to me now that I actually used to have a plan for my life, a future before I met Lex.

I wanted to play soccer. And then I wanted to play music, really play music. But then we met and it all was just too hard. Everything was too hard. I couldn't do a single thing without her by my side. So I pushed everything away, for her. For us.

My phone rings, and I watch as my daydreams disappear before me, disintegrating into the dark. It's late now. Any logical person should be asleep. But this is precisely why I am awake.

Ashton's name flashes across the screen, which raises my blood pressure because he himself is the logical person here, and he should have been asleep hours ago.

I lift the phone to my air and breathe for the first time in this night.

"Hey Ash. Is everything okay?"

And everything is not okay, as his words inform me. It is not okay and it never has been and I'm beginning to think it never will be again. And just as quickly as my thoughts of pursuing my career and passions other than Lex, they are gone, and my life comes into perspective once again.

His words blur together as I fumble for my car keys. As I reach for them, my fingers graze one of Lex's earrings that she mistakenly left at my house the other night. She always takes them out before she goes to sleep, and I always thought it was the cutest thing ever. She would sit down on the side of whoever's bed we were sleeping in that night, and pull the blankets over her legs. And then she would gently take out the earrings and set them next to her, on the nightstand. And then my arms would reach around her and bring her softness to me, and would be so, so happy.