“I love you too.”
Oliver had always hated goodbyes. Not me. I looked out the window and watched him as he put on his sunglasses and got into the car. He started it up, turned, and got lost on the streets of Brisbane.
I turned around and faced the girl who looked back at me from the tall mirror in its sculpted wooden frame. We were the same. Neither of us had on a raincoat full of holes. I thought it was a good idea to remind myself of that every morning, to start the day smiling at myself. Or at least trying. You’ll be fine, I repeated. You will. Because it can’t rain forever in your heart, can it? I grabbed my headphones, lay in bed, and closed my eyes after putting a strawberry sucker in my mouth while a Beatles album surrounded me with familiar notes and voices. I suppressed the urge to cry.
And I thought…I thought of things that used to exist and now didn’t…
Everything can change in an instant. I had heard that phrase many times throughout my life, but I had never stopped to consider it, chew on it, savor the meaning those words can leave on your tongue when you’ve digested them and they’ve become your own. That bitter feeling that accompanies every what if that awakens when something bad happens and you ask yourself if it was avoidable, because the difference between having everything and having nothing is sometimes no more than a second. Just one. Like back then, when that car swerved into the opposite lane. Or now, when he decided that he didn’t have anything to fight for and the black and gray lines ended up swallowing all the color that had floated around me months before.
Because, at that second, he turned right.
And I wanted to follow him, but I hit a barrier.
And I knew I could only keep going by turning left.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Can Leah and Axel reconcile their love?
Read on for a sneak peek as their story continues.
PROLOGUE
It scared me that the line between hate and love was so fine, so slender that you could jump straight from one extreme to the other. And I loved him… I loved him in my solar plexus, with my eyes, my heart. My entire body reacted when he was near. But another part of me hated him. I hated him with my memories, with words never uttered, with scorn, and was incapable of opening my arms and offering him forgiveness, however much I wanted to do so. When I looked at him, I saw black, red, throbbing purple: emotions welling over. And feeling something so chaotic for him hurt me, because Axel was a part of me. He always would be. Despite everything.
November
* * *
(SPRING, AUSTRALIA)
1
_________
Leah
My eyes were still closed when I felt his lips sliding down the curve of my shoulder, before they traveled further down and left a trail of kisses next to my bellybutton; sweet kisses, delicate, the kind that make you quiver. I smiled. Then my smile disappeared when I felt his hot breath on my ribs. Close to him. Close to the words Axel had once traced out with his fingers on my skin, that Let it be that I got tattooed there afterward.
I shifted, ill at ease, then opened my eyes. I put a hand on his cheek and tugged until his mouth met mine and a feeling of calm swept over me. We took off our clothes in the silence of that still and sunny morning, a Saturday just like any other. I held him as he slid inside me. Slow. Deep. Easy. I arched my back when I needed more, one last hard intense thrust. But that didn’t give me what I needed. I wedged a hand between us and stroked myself with my fingers. We came at the same time. I was panting. He was moaning my name.
He flopped to one side, and I stayed there looking at the smooth white ceiling of his room. It wasn’t long before I sat up in his bed and he grabbed my wrist.
“You’re going already?” His voice was soft.
“Yeah. I’ve got stuff to do.”
I got up and walked barefoot to the chair where I’d thrown my clothes the night before. From between the sheets, hands folded behind his head, Landon watched me getting dressed. I adjusted the thin belt of my skirt, then threw my tank top over my head. I slung the bag my brother had given me for Christmas over my shoulder and pulled my hair back in a ponytail on my way out the door.
“Hey, wait. Don’t I get a kiss before you leave?”
I walked back to the bed smiling and bent over to kiss him. He tenderly stroked my cheek then sighed with satisfaction.
“Will I see you tonight?” he asked.
“I can’t, I’ll be in the studio until late.”
“But it’s Saturday. Come on, Leah.”
“Sorry. How about dinner tomorrow?”
“OK.”
“I’ll call you,” I said.
I walked down the stairs beneath the warm gray morning sky. I took my headphones out of my backpack, grabbed a lollipop, and stuck it in my mouth. I ran through the crosswalk just before the light turned red and cut through a park full of flowers on the way to my studio.
Well, not really my studio. Not exactly. Not totally.
I had worked hard all through college to get a scholarship that would allow me to have a little space for myself. And this was it.
When I stepped in, the scent of paint permeated everything. I dropped my junk in a plush armchair and grabbed the smock hanging on the back of the door. I was knotting it as I walked over to the painting overlooking that old attic space.
I shook as I observed the delicate outlines of the waves, the splatter of foam, and the iridescent sunlight that seemed to radiate from the canvas. I grabbed the wood handle of my palette knife and mixed colors as I went on glancing from the corner of my eye at that canvas that seemed in some eerie way to be challenging me. I picked up a brush and felt my hand shaking as my memories crashed down. There was a trembling in my stomach as I remembered the night I had to come running because I needed right then to paint that stretch of beach I knew so well, even if it had been three years since I’d set foot there…
Three years without that bit of sea, so different from all the others.
Three years in which everything had changed.
Three years without seeing him. Three years without Axel.
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