Song!! It really brings out the emotion in this chapter, and I greatly request you listen to it as you read. Also, buckle your seatbelts, because this is going to be one wild ride.
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LOUIS🗡
Monday, 9:43pm
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I COULDN'T TAKE MY EYES OFF HER.
Not in a creepy way, of course, but in one I couldn't really explain. After that moment a few hours ago, the world felt different. I had held her hand, and she had held it back. I felt like I was clinging onto the memory of it now, just as I had been clinging onto her then.
Eventually, she moved on, holing herself up in the corner of the room as she typed away on a rented computer for information. She said she wanted to get a head start on the mission plan to stop The Embers, because we 'wouldn't know when the bomb was planned to set off'. She was right, so I left her to it.
"Ash?" I'd ask after a while.
She'd look up from her computer. "Yeah, Lou?"
And I'd forget what it was that I had to say.
Even just meeting her gaze somehow terrified me to an extreme extent, and I felt myself hesitating just to speak. So I'd just shrug it off, pretending I was just simply checking-in with her. She'd return to her work. I returned to mine.
I was in charge of dinner.
I was supposed to make pasta—because I bought the ingredients for pasta—but half-way through I got distracted by the soft humming noise she'd exhale as she scrolled through the laptop in interest. She had this funny habit of biting her lip when she focused on something.
But even though the walls of our rented AirBnB space were small in size, I still felt like I was a mile away from her. All I wanted was to drop everything and hold her hand again, because I'd never felt more at peace than I did in that moment, fingers intertwined with someone I'd grown to care about.
And then she looked up, locking eyes with me once again.
"Lou," she said.
[y/n].
"Louis," she said again.
Rising onto her feet, I watched as she strode across the room heading straight towards where I stood in the small kitchen. What was she doing? I took a step back, not sure what I should be bracing myself for, because she had a look of determination in her eyes, and was reaching out her hand to—
"Bloody Hell, Partridge," she exclaimed, placing her hand on the stove to turn it off, "the water's boiling over!"
Oh Hell.
I'd gotten so lost in thought, that I failed to notice that the pot of water I had been heating up was bubbling over the sides of the metal bowl, dribbling over the marble counter like a burning waterfall.
"Hey," Ash said quickly, snapping her fingers, "Is everything okay?"
I blinked. "Yeah, sorry, I just—"
"You've been zoning out all evening."
"Have I?"
"Mhmm," she nodded, before placing her hand on my forehead, "are you feeling sick?"
No, but I was definitely feeling something.
Something in the way she was so close to me now, her warm breath fanning over my skin as she worried over me. Something in the way her fingers traced against my face like ink on a page, seeping, and seeping, and seeping into the paper of my soul and leaving an unreadable mark. Something in the way that was so her, that I nearly forgot I was me.
"Are you okay?" She asked, her voice softer now.
I nodded. "I am."
"I can finish dinner, go lie down," she said, bobbing her head towards the living room couch, "I can't have you dying on me, Partridge."
If only she knew.
If only she knew how many times I wished I'd died, but now begged for more minutes of time just so I can be with her. My life seemed easy, because I'd always been so arrogant, but in reality, it was hard, and I was alone, and I gave up everything for a job that turned its back on me without a second look.
And then she walked in, and I felt alive again.
Now I find myself knowing the words to the feeling I'd suppressed for so long. I couldn't put a name to it, but now I felt it running over my mind like the current of an ocean. I was drowning in it now. The life I lived was now only worth living, because she was in it, and my brain kept screaming at me to just tell her, tell her, tell her, tell her—
"[y/n]," I blurted out, grabbing her hand.
She looked surprised. "Yeah?"
"I..."
Where were my words?
They were just in my head, because I was just thinking about them, but I couldn't figure out how to say them. Not when she was standing in front of me. Not when the world could describe her with metaphors of beauty, but I wouldn't dare to, because to me beauty was her.
So I decided not to say anything at all.
Grabbing her face with my hands, I pressed her up against the kitchen counter, crashing my lips onto hers with more purpose than I'd ever put into anything else in my life. I'd missed this feeling. It was like feeling the sun rise and set in one single moment, and when I felt her start to kiss back, the stars started to shine as well.
Her taste tingled on the tip of my lips like sugar, addicting and sickly sweet, and I couldn't bring myself to pull away from her, even though I found it harder to breathe with each second that passed.
"Lou," she breathed out, words slipping between spaces.
I let myself fall into the feeling.
"Louis," she said again.
I let myself fall for her.
"We can't do this."
And then I crashed to the ground.
She placed her hands against my chest, pushing me off of her so hard that I nearly stumbled back. There was a moment where all she did was look at me, her eyes widened with fear, but then she made her escape towards the living room. I shouldn't have kissed her. It felt so right, and both of us seemed to want it, but now it seemed we couldn't have it.
I followed her into the living room, watching as she began to pace, her hand lingering over her mouth as if she was ashamed to remember what just happened.
"Did I do something wrong?" I said, coming to a stop in front of her.
She shook her head, eyes unable to stick to one target.
"Then what do you mean we can't?" I asked.
Her voice wavered. "You'll trick me again"
"No, Ash, I won't."
I reached out my hand to her, but she shoved it away, pacing to another side of the room farther away from me. Her posture was breaking, I noticed it now. Just like it had when we stood face to face with the people she hated most.
"Louis, you don't understand," she said, her voice starting to break now, "you can, but I can't, because—"
"Because what?"
"Because I can't trust you when it comes to this!" She blurted out, "it's all happening too fast, and I just, no, it's—I just can't."
"[y/n]..."
"Please don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Say my name like that!" She exclaimed, "you say it so easily, as if you know everything about me when you don't!"
Her voice was starting to raise, and it sparked something in me. I felt like all the progress we had created was chipping away with another fight. I didn't want to fight, but now I felt there was nowhere else to go. She wouldn't listen to me.
"Of course I don't know anything about you," I said, "because you never give me a chance to."
"With good reason!"
"What reason?"
"Because I don't trust you!"
"Then that's on you," I exhaled, "I've done everything I could to show you I care, and that I'm sorry, and that I trust you, but you never pick up on it!"
She had tears in her eyes now. "So it's my fault now?"
"Yes!"
"Then it's your fault for ruining us to begin with!"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"So you forgot?" She scoffed, "wow, Partridge, clearly it meant nothing if you don't remember throwing me in jail the last time we kissed."
I frowned, "that was a mistake."
"So was this!"
"Nice one, Ash, really classy of you!"
"Give me a break! You've given me no reason to trust you mean any of this!"
"Yes, I have! And maybe you should listen to me for once!"
"Why should I?"
"Because I love you, God Dammit!" I yelled.
And the world came to a stop when those words left my mouth.
I didn't even realize I had said them until I saw the shocked look on her face, eyes red with forming tears and broken spirits. Where love should have been declared—for whatever reason I couldn't quite explain—she seemed to only see shadows.
"Take it back," she said, shaking her head, "you don't mean it."
I took a step forward. "I do mean it, Ash."
"You don't. I know you don't."
"The explain why I've done more for my enemy than I have for myself," I said, rolling up my sleeve. The tattoo I had gotten was displayed, "I gave my heart to you when I got this, [y/n], how can you not see that?"
"Because no one's loved me before," she said, "so how can I accept that someone does now?"
"Ash..."
"I don't want to talk about it," she said, turning away, "I'm going to sleep."
She turned towards the door to her room, head titled towards the floor, and eyes darkened with a painful feeling I didn't want to feel for myself. But I put my heart out on the table, and she was just walking away from it, and I didn't know what to do but stand there and call out to her once more.
"Why do you always run from me?" I asked.
There was a pause, where she stopped walking, hands inches from the door in front of her. She didn't turn around. She didn't meet my gaze.
"I run from everybody," she said, "you're not special."
And in that moment I felt like I'd been stabbed in the chest a million times because of those words. Did she mean them? I prayed she didn't, but the shutting of her door in my face felt like she was shutting me out of her life.
Yes, I had said, she's special.
But I wasn't special to her.