“I just don’t know who you are anymore!” she screamed out with pure hatred dripping from her voice.
In her eyes.
In her fucking soul.
Her fists slammed into my chest with a hard thud, but I barely wavered. I’d take every blow, every yell, every single goddamn thing she delivered.
Her pain.
Her sadness.
Her desire to let go and just be.
It was all clear as day, glaring right at me.
The fear in my mind grew at a rapid speed, corrupting the only vacant spaces left of my being. The unease festering inside me was far greater than anything I’d ever known or felt.
It took over as I stepped toward her, instantly blocked by an imaginary wall she had built so high, it would simply crush her the moment I tried to knock it down.
Caving us both in.
“Get away from me! Just get away from me!”
She was slipping further away from the life we fought so hard for.
Everything we wanted.
Everything we needed.
Everything we prayed for time and time again was disappearing like a thief in the night.
Willingly taking the love of my life with it.
“Bailey … please … please don’t say that. I’m begging you…” I extended my hand, but she immediately pulled away as if the words she spewed were in fact our reality.
Leaving me far behind.
I ran my hands through my disheveled hair, yearning to rip it out of my head. “Bailey, ple—”
“No! No! No! No!” she wholeheartedly repeated, placing her hands over her ears. Backing into the wall with nothing but her sobs and desperate pleas filling the small space between us.
Wrecking the fuck out of me.
“I don’t want you anywhere near me! Go away! Just go away!”
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t fucking breathe.
“Bailey, just calm down! Calm the fuck down and let me—”
“I don’t want you near me! I don’t need you! I want nothing from you but for you to leave me alone!”
“Bay, you know I can’t do that,” I strongly conveyed, trying to steady my tone. Compose myself, catch my bearings, knowing it would help bring her back to me in the end. “Beauty—”
“Stop calling me that! That’s not my name!” She reached for the first thing in sight and chucked it at me. Her rage completely taking over.
I let the glass hit my shoulder, hoping it would help her find truth through the lies.
“I don’t know you anymore! Why can’t you understand that I don’t want anything to do with you! Nothing!”
“Don’t push me, Bay. You don’t mean that. You don’t fucking mean that. Please, baby … don’t do this … don’t fucking do this to us…” I pleaded with my hands steepled out in front me.
Praying.
Surrendering.
Relinquishing defeat.
My white flag was up. My goddamn flag was raised up high, flowing adamantly through the storm.
“Just stay away from me,” she murmured so low, I could barely hear her. Narrowing her gorgeous eyes at me with an endless stream of questions splitting through her unsettled gaze. Making it difficult for her to focus solely on me.
On my voice.
On my presence.
Her.
Me.
Us.
“Aiden—”
“Please don’t leave me, Beauty. Please…”
I took an agonizing step toward her. “I.” Two more slow steps. “Love.” Another two brought me inches away from her mouth. I resisted the desire to claim her lips like I’d done hundreds, thousands, millions of times before.
A lifetime of kisses.
I love you’s.
You’re mines.
Instead, my eyes stayed fixated on her face. My core seized tighter, my knees got weaker, my body ached, remembering the reassuring symmetry of her heart beating against mine.
“You, Bailey Ashlyn Pierce. My girl, my wife, my best friend, my whole fucking heart.” Grabbing her face in between my hands, I yearned for her to feel me.
To see me.
To love me.
The man who would die for her.
It didn’t take long for our bodies to close the emotional and physical distance between us. From her mind to her heart, to every goddamn bone in her body, I knew she felt it. There was no way in hell she couldn’t sense the effect I always had on her.
The effect she’d always have on me.
“You’re all the same. Don’t you get it? You’re one of them. You’re just one of them to me, Aiden. That’s all that’s left. Don’t you see?”
I gripped onto her face. “To Hell with that, Bay. I’m your one and only. I’m your home.”
“There’s no peace for me in that house.”
“I know, you took it all with you.”
Her body trembled, her strong, hardened composure weakened with each word that escaped from her mouth. “Why do you keep hurting me?”
I grimaced as if the wind had been knocked right out of me. “I would never hurt you. Never. I’m here, Bailey.” My grip shifted toward the nook of her neck, tugging her toward me, bringing her heart against mine. “I’m right here.”
She hadn’t let me feel her warmth, her security, her heart in what felt like an eternity.
“This is where I belong. Where I’ve always been since we were seven-years-old. I’m a part of you. I need you to hear me screaming out for you. I still need you, Beauty. I’m lost without you.” Pulling her hair away from her face to look deep into her eyes, I said the only thing that was true.
The only truth I ever knew.
“I choose us, Bailey Pierce. I will always choose us. No matter what. I. Choose. Us.”
She consciously jerked back from the weight of my words.
My girl was at a loss, and I had nothing left to lose.
“It’s you and me against the world, baby. It’s always been you and me against the world. You know that, Bay. You do. Just come back to me … please. I can’t live, I can’t breathe… I can’t go on without you.”
She didn’t say a word, not one fucking word. She just stood there, looking at me. Searching for the man she once knew. Her resolve was slowly breaking, but I couldn’t take it anymore.
I broke down. I bawled, pulling her back toward me, and to my surprise she let me.
“If I did anything right in my life, it was loving you. Do you understand me? You were the beginning of everything for me. You will forever be my always, Bay, I only need two things in this world. You and us. Just you and us, Bailey.” I leaned forward, setting my forehead against hers, taking a deep breath, trying to gather my thoughts.
My emotions.
My fucking memories.
“I’m trying, Bay. I don’t know what else I can do. Please don’t give up on me. On us.”
“Aiden … please.”
I peered up at her as tears started spilling down the sides of her beautiful face, one right after the other. She didn’t even try to hide them, she let her emotions flow freely. Wanting me to see the part inside of her she thought died long ago.
“Just take me back, baby. Please… God, just take me back to the night we first met,” I faintly uttered near her ear, hanging on by a thread.
Hoping she realized the significance in what I just said.
As soon as her eyes filled with fresh tears, I wiped them all away. Not knowing where to go from here. She held my gaze until the sensations became too much for her. Lowering herself onto the edge of the bed as her chest heaved for her next breath.
In one swift movement, I fell to my knees in front of her and clung onto the back of her neck. There was no way in hell she could keep me away. Before she even realized what was happening, I was holding her delicate frame in my strong and steady arms. Kissing away the tears on her face as they fell to the floor between us. She stirred beneath my lips, her body shuddered under my touch.
Giving me hope, strength, the reassurance I needed to go on.
“Aiden, please…” Her mouth quivered. “Just let me go.”
“I won’t lose you,” I breathed out against her lips. “I have seen you in so many different ways, and I have loved you in each one of them. For better or for worse, Bay … for better or for worse, I will love you.”
She sucked in a breath, and our mouths parted in sync with one another.
“You’re my answered prayer, Bailey. I will love you until I stop breathing, until the last seconds of my heart beating, because you are my beginning and my end.”
“Aiden,” she rasped an eerie tone, causing shivers to course down my spine as I knelt before her.
I ignored the looming essence that wrapped around my neck like a noose. Simply sucking the life out of me. Shutting my eyes, I softly kissed the corner of her mouth.
Recalling every memory.
Every sentiment she ever lured out of me.
Every instance I fought for what was mine.
What do you do when you meet your soulmate at seven-years-old?
You give…
You live…
And you love…
Until you hear the words, “I just don’t love you anymore.”
Putting an end to us.
To you.
To me.
For now and forever.
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