Page 20 of Leah

I thought—

I’m going crazy.

It was obvious my desperation for having Leah back in my life was fucking with my head. I’d been cold on the inside the second I left her standing on the side of the street, tears falling from her eyes as she’d stared longingly at me fading away in the distance.

I’d been regretting leaving her every second after that. I consoled myself for a while that she needed her space. I couldn’t descend on her life again and tear it apart. I wanted to—but I wasaware I’d fucked with her emotions, wrung them dry, made her feel a pain I truly did not intend to cause.

I consumed myself in music as an attempt to distract myself from her, and for a little while, it worked.

But I wanted her.

I wantedmore.

The feeling had come to me so violently months after I’d left. The clarity was sharp as a blade, piercing me hard the day I got a call.

“Your father’s passed away,” said my uncle Joe on the other end. “He had a heart attack this morning.”

The world stopped spinning.

I had gripped that phone so tight, I could hear it stressing in my hand. My vision swam, and suddenly my life felt like a fucking chasm filled with regrets.

I’d never get the chance to tell him I was sorry.

With my permission, the family decided to cremate him. He stayed at my grandmother’s house, a woman I’d barely seen in my life. In fact, I hardly, if at all, knew any of them. They were just people my dad had spoken about in passing.

I didn’t come from a lovey-dovey close-knit family, and I never attended their “Celebration of Life” memorial, deciding instead not to confront his passing. That was around the time I started to lose myself, and being alone without Leah’s voice, warmth, presence—it made that chasm of regret fester with unspoken words.

I had been wanting her back since, and all everyone around me wanted to do was keep us apart. Telling me she needed a break. That I had destroyed her, and she wouldn’t survive another heartbreak. As if already damning me, assuming I’d make her go through that bullshit again.

It was guilt that kept me away, and what I’d become… who I was now since I’d left her…

No.

She couldn’t be with me like this.

Her entire world would be flipped upside down. I needed out of the spotlight first. Needed the fame to die down so I could re-join the human fucking race without looking like a yellow highlighter in a sea of dull colours. I needed to blend in.Fuck,I longed for the day we faded to black.

At this point, it was an eternity away, and then some.

And what would she do in that time? What had she done with all this space? Moved on? Fucked someone that wasn’t me—

The thought of her wrapped around another made me grit my teeth with anger and sadness.

Yeah, I was sad, and maybe she wasn’t.

She’s close right now, you know you can see her—

My phone vibrated on the nightstand just then, disrupting my thoughts. I grabbed it, needing a distraction, and checked the message sent by Rome.

Carter, there’s been a change of plans.

I didn’t respond and shut my eyes instead.

Whatever plans he had to change could wait until tomorrow.

Right now—

Right now I needed sleep.

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