I may not have spoken the words “I love you,” but she knew I gave her five years of loyalty after I watched him break her heart in college.
That didn't stop the one girl I loved silently from choosing someone else instead of me.
She chose to love and lose rather than love someone with my history. The worst part? I still couldn't hate her.
I put myself on trial. I swore myself in, jury of one, interrogated every feeling, cross examined every detail, and came to a verdict: I was guilty of loving someone I knew wouldn't love me back.
Five years of unrequited love didn’t count when it went unseen and the first guy she sees in college shows her more in comparison.
It wasn't hard when my kind of love was invisible.
That's the thing about unrequited love: It never feels one sided. Layla didn't ignore my existence. I took everything she gave me, like someone offered to reopen my case. Every touch, look, even her silky words felt like a poor two-way street—nothing one sided.
Through the mess of Ollie, the love of her life, finding his way back to her was how I met Addileigh. She was the perfect distraction after Layla; nothing about them resembled each other. Addileigh was selfish, arrogant, trouble, and unattainable.
Something inside of me broke when I saw her gray eyes, so it could reset to heal.
Addileigh was going to take a chance on me and didn't even know it yet, because what we were doing took two people to build this two-way street.
Requited.
Mutual.
Reciprocated.
Addileigh was just taking up space in my heart, like bubble wrap takes up space to protect the fragile object inside. I didn't plan on liking anything I saw. None of it was real. The only real thing was her resentment for this life.
She was a freshman in college, while I was two feet firm in adulthood. The list of differences and reasons to avoid her was a mile long. Yet, there I was paving my two-way street.
Addi pleaded to come with me to LA when she found out I was leaving. I liked watching her beg… for my time, for whatever fucked up mating dance we were doing, for whatever she fixed on wanting that I had. I would have given her the world on a silver platter and apologized for its crooked way if she asked me to while wearing that red matte lipstick and her gray eyes full of specks of green she denied seeing.
She loathed being unique.
It was some fucked up version of PTSD. Her parents wanted a carbon copy of her perfect sister, Liz, and those kind of expectations made her hate everything that set her apart from anyone. All she wanted to do was blend in.
Tough shit.
Addi couldn't blend in wearing camo in the woods hiding behind a tree.
It was exactly what I liked: how obvious everything was. She was the opposite of Layla.
Addi upset? Typically involved yelling.
Addi sad? Tears.
Addi horny? Well, that's less obvious. She was a poster child for undressing her with your eyes, but I wasn't the only one.
Only a few months ago she made herself even more unique by having an affair with a married man, who also taught her theater classes. My history of priors kept me from judging people’s mistakes too critically and gave me an appetite for pain.
The only thing I was judging was how willing I was to share all of a sudden. First Layla, now Addi… what was next? Compromise? Reason? Other good guy traits I didn't have?
LA was a mandatory trip. It wasn't pleasure, it was all business, and it had me on edge. Marcus didn't demand your presence without a reason. I've only met him less than a handful of times and had been selling for him since I was 15.
How bad could it be? I didn't even warrant a house call.
I was snug in the first class seat I had sprung for. I already didn't love the company of others, and coach seemed like a personal invitation to sneak peek hell. I closed my eyes, trying to push away the sharp edges of not knowing why I was being summoned, when Addi’s hand landed on my upper thigh, while coach boarded behind us. I didn't even have to open my eyes to see her seductive lips suggesting more than her hand.
“Wanna join the mile high club?”
“Who says I'm not high already?”
She rolled her eyes, complete with snatching her hand back to cross her arms across her chest, so I got the point she was making. Her point was obvious and resembled a tantrum. I wasn't condoning her behavior or pulling focus from me getting some sleep on the plane.
My wants came first; that wasn't ever going to change. Call me selfish, but I call it self-preservation.
I gave her a quality side eye before shutting my eyes again and falling into a light sleep. It really felt like just a rest instead of actual sleep, like I was hoping for. I was going to take whatever I could, like I always did.
Her relentless personality woke me up two hours later to try the same trick, hoping for a better result.
It was one thing I loved about her: You knew what she was fighting for, at all times.
“Come on, Hunter. I'm bored. Don't you want to have some fun?”
I didn't bother opening my eyes to respond, “I am having fun… sleeping.”
Without looking, I knew she was leaning over her armrest, hoping that proximity would break me down. I wasn't a child, and my criminal history left me with a rock hard reserve that made me hard to read… and also hard to love, if we’re being honest.
“Sleep when you're dead. Right now we’re alive and going to California. Let's celebrate!”
Just watching her say anything about her dream made her infectious smile transfer to me. Her eyes could beam like someone just gave her a puppy or money. Her smile got so big that I could see almost every tooth in her mouth.
All Addi really spoke of was her dream of moving to LA, getting an agent, and auditioning for movies. It was burned so deep into my memory I didn't have to open my eyelids; I could see it clear as the sky in California.
“If I give in, will you let me sleep the rest of the flight?”
I could feel the excitement radiate off her, trying to infect me. Everything about this girl was infectious—right down to her damn candy apple red lips, which I knew were poison, slowly killing me.
The familiar heat started in my stomach and spread every direction when she awoken my cock with her warm lips and voice brushing my ear as she whispered, “Meet me in the bathroom in 5.”
My dick was always making poor decisions, fucking the wrong women—Layla, the one-way street; Jade, my criminally-allergic-to-commitment twin; and now Addi, the girl I was trying hard not to like any more than I did.
In the depth of my haze-induced highs, I would wonder how much of my feelings for Layla died and how much of them simply got stuck to Addi by accident.
When I met Addi, I felt things I didn't know how to justify. Layla needed me to protect her. I was there for her, and what I felt for her was like a second skin—natural. Addi didn't need anything from me, and everything I felt was uncomfortable, because I didn't know where it was born from.
My now dead heart?
My witness protection demeanor?
I slid open the door to the bathroom she left unlocked to find her propped on the small sink with her legs already spread wider than I needed.
Thank god I sprung for First Class. Coach bathroom sex would have been even more work for my distracted mind.
She pulled my shirt with so much force I knew there was going to be wrinkles left, where her fingers clenched into fists. I was dragged up against her, until I was now flush against her hard nipples poking through her thin sweater, which was more useful left in Boston’s heatwave.