for rayna, because she's HILARIOUS and adorable and just lights up my entire world <33
EIGHTEEN
Sweet dreams could not have been made of this, this horribly electrifying and painfully tingling feeling that runs through my veins and leaves every joint sore. It feels like my body is begging me to let it shut down but my brain won't allow it, and that's where I'm left—this horribly in-between stage. But I have to stay strong and hold my ground.
Ford takes a shaking step forward, just as I grab onto a broom for protection. "What do you want Ford?" I press the broom in front of my body. "And stay back." I warn him.
Ford laughs mockingly, pointing at my broom. "You think that's going to hold me back?"
"I think that this up your ass will." I step back, making sure to keep my distance. If my memory serves me right, drunk Ford is no one to mess with.
Ford puts his hands up in surrender, still laughing. "All I want is to talk. Is that so bad? Just a little platicar?"
"I have nothing to say to you." That's not true. I have a lot to say, perhaps too much, but now isn't the time. In fact, the time to talk to him is never. I love Brady, and that's never going to change. Ford is my weakness, my drug—he gets me hooked and then completely destroys me. Even now, staring into his eyes for the time that I have been is causing my hands to shake while they hold the broom.
"Then let me do the talking." He offers, walking even closer to me. "I've been doing a lot of thinking since our last talk." Ford begins, running a hand over his face. "And I've come to a decision—I hate you."
"You hate me?" I couldn't help it—a barking laugh escapes my mouth. This all sounds too good to be true.
"Yes." Ford keeps his composure, his face hard and firm. "I hate you and everything that you've ever done to me, Leah."
I grip on tighter to the broom. "What the hell have I done to you Ford?"
Fords lips form a smile, and before he speaks I can tell that this one isn't like his normal ones. It's sad, weak, frail—absolutely nothing like the Ford I knew.
"You broke my heart."
His words are a machete to my heart, ripping through sloppily and aggressively until all that's left is a marked and chewed up mess of what it used to be. Slowly, I set down the broom on the side of the wall, not daring to look at him. "You're lying." I whisper.
"Why would I be?" His voice cracks, a broken laugh splitting through the tense air. "We broke up and you completely isolated me, letting your friends tell you lies about me until you could hardly even look at me. All of those times that I'd try to talk to you, to fix what I broke, you looked the other way. You didn't even give me a chance, Leah, not once." Then he smiles, that same sad, broken smile. "And then you started dating Brady. I should've known that it would've only gotten worse from there."
Ford reaches his lean hand towards my face, and just when it's about to brush my cheek I smack it right back down. "Don't touch me." I hiss, angrily swatting at the fallen tears running down my cheeks out of pure frustration. "You don't have the fucking right to touch me."
"Leah—" Ford begins.
"Save it." My lower jaw is shaking as I speak which isn't helping the strong woman image that I'm attempting to portray. "I'm so fucking done with you Ford. I'm beyond done."
"You're done? I think you've made that blindingly clear." Ford scoffs.
"By doing what? Kissing my boyfriend?" I make sure to enunciate the word fully, just to sting. "At least the person that I'm locking lips with hasn't slept with the entire school."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"That you're a slut!" I practically scream. "You've slept with almost every girl at our school, have a new one making dents in your locker every morning—and for what? To prove a point? To please the little guy downstairs?"
I'm breathing heavily, panting even, and my hands are clenched so tightly at my sides that I'm beginning to lose feeling in them. But nothing, absolutely nothing, can match the pain that I feel from looking at Ford after my outburst. His lips are pressed together, his eyes glassy with drunk tears, and all over his face I can see how hurt he is by my words. I had meant to hurt him, but I had also forgotten that I would get hurt in the process.
His words are soft, like moonlight slipping through a window. "You really think that, Leah?" He asks me. "That I'm a slut?"
"If the shoe fits." I murmur.
He looks at the floor. "Well it isn't true. I haven't slept with anyone since you and I."
By then, I've had enough. I zip up my coat to leave, grabbing my car keys out of my pocket. "Even if you were a good liar, I wouldn't have believed you."
I make a move to exit, but that involves pushing past him and I've never been quite good at that. Ford blocks my path, his hand reaching out to hold onto my arm. "I'm serious, Leah."
"You mean to tell me that out of all of those girls, you haven't slept with one of them?"
"Why do you suppose there's a new one every day?" Ford wonders rhetorically. "Because I take them home, trying to convince myself that this will be it, that I'll finally do it with someone other than you. But when our clothes are off and our bodies are ready, I can't bring myself to do it, because behind those eyes of a stranger I see you, smiling down at me and telling me over and over again how much you love me and how much you want us to be forever. And you know what I see next?" Ford grips tighter onto my hand. "I see you sobbing, I see me shattering your heart into a thousand pieces as I watch you go, wishing that I could just kiss you one. More. Time."
"Stop." I meekly say, whether it be from how painful his words feel on my heart or how he's gripping my wrists I'm not quite sure. Either way, Ford ignores me.
"Do you know why I broke up with you?" Ford queries.
"Because you didn't love me." I whisper, biting my bottom lip to hold back my sobs.
"Because I loved you so fucking much that I couldn't think about anything else." Ford whispers back, his hands moving from my wrists up to clutch my cheeks, calloused thumbs rubbing them ethereally. "Morning, evening and night there was only one thing on my mind, Leah, and it was you. You consumed my thoughts and my actions to the point where I would lay awake at night, thinking about what you were doing and where you were. I got jealous when a guy simply looked at you a certain way, even Landon, and it drove me insane. I hated myself because of how much I was willing to do just to keep you. I was willing to die for you, Leah, and that scared me.
"Then, just when I was going to tell Brady how I felt, he told me that he had feelings for you as well. He told me that he had for a while, and if I considered things to be awkward, than I could always tell him to back off. And at first, that's exactly what I did. I told him constantly to back off until it seemed like he couldn't even look at you without me being jealous. That wasn't fair of me, to push your friends away just because I couldn't handle it. I was getting out of control. I was a mess. Worst of all, I wasn't good for you. So I had to let you go Leah. I had to let you breath." Ford brushes a tear off of my cheek, his eyes spilling fat, hot ones of his own. "It was the hardest decision that I ever had to make made, Leah. But it had to be done."
"That's not fair." I croak. "You fucked me up, Ford."
"I know—"
I shook my head. "You don't know," I argue. "I couldn't understand, for the longest time, why you would leave me. Like there was something wrong with me, like I was the problem." I closed my eyes tightly. "You don't know what that feels like. To feel like nothing when you thought you were someone's everything."
"You are my everything." Ford digs his fingers into my cheeks. "And I'm yours." When I didn't reply, Ford began to lean in towards my mouth, his breath warm against my lips, wreaking of beer, but felt good nonetheless. "Please, please tell me that I'm you're everything. Just once, please, Leah."
I couldn't handle this. I couldn't take this pain, this searing pain mixed with undeniable want. It was driving me insane, pushing through my soul until I felt like I was going to explode. "You're not my everything." I croak, and even though they weren't directed towards me, even I could feel just how painful they were. "Brady is my everything."
"No," He softly began to to stroke my cheeks once again. "That's not true—you know that isn't true."
"Yes it is." I argue weakly.
"No." Ford smiles sadly. "When he smiles at you, you see me smiling at you. When he touches you, you feel my fingers. When he kisses you, you taste my hot lips on yours, tasting every single inch of your skin. And when he says he loves you, you tell me that you love me right back." He's only a breath away from me now, only a simple inhale from my lips, and like a feather he whispers—"I love you."
That's it. When he leans in and brushes his lips against mine, I know that I'm a goner and frankly, I don't care. I embrace his lips, soft, warm and wet against mine as they suckle on my bottom lip, tugging and breaking all restraints of self control that I had been holding back. I kiss him back then, my tongue running along the delicate innards of his mouth, tasting the beer and the whiskey that I knew he'd been drinking, and normally I'd be upset. But today, I don't care. I'm just so happy that he's here and that he's mine in this moment that I could honestly care less what his lips taste like.
Ford's clutching my body, arms circling around my waist and hands running along the back of my creased uniform shirt. My arms are automatically wrapped around his neck, hands tugging at his soft, brown, waves, relishing in the feel of them on my skin. Before I know what's happening, I'm being pushed back onto a table, a chair falls to the ground, and I'm lying on my back. I moan in pure bliss as Ford's lips meet the hot skin of my neck, licking and sucking, all while his hands are unbuttoning my shirt. Everything is about to fall into place, I'm finally about to be the happiest that I've ever been, and this is confirmed when Ford tugs at my blue push up bra, lips momentarily releasing my skin.
"Shit."
I jump up, shoving Ford off of me before nearly falling over onto the floor. Brady drops something from his hands, something square, and the look in his eyes mirrors every emotion that I suddenly feel towards myself—horror, pain, disgust, hate.
"Brady." I exhale shakily, shaking hands trying to button my top. "Brady pl—"
"Sorry to intrude." Is all that he says before leaving the restaurant with a slam of the door.
I turn to look back at Ford, tears completely clouding my vision of him, before dashing over to the door. When I've wiped the tears out of my eyes and am able to see out of the window, Brady's car is ripping out of the parking lot. He's gone, figuratively and literally. I then turn and pick up the square thing that Brady dropped, and as soon as I open it, a heartbreaking sob escapes my lips.
In it lies a thin banded ring with a big fat diamond lying in the middle.
A diamond too fat to mean anything friendly.
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AUTHORS NOTE
ASIDFKDSAFHASDKLFDSAFH YOU GUYS HAVE NO IDEA HOW LONG I WAITED TO POST THIS CHAPTER HOLY COW. i've been thinking through this story for a good while now, and this specific chapter has been that I was the most excited. for all of you Brady fans (SPOILER), sorry, but it only gets worse from here ://
i REALLY REALLY hoped that you enjoyed this chapter!! plEASE tell me what you guys thought because are basically what I live off of <33