Page 5 of Chasing You

It might sound ridiculous, it was only one summer…but I felt more in that summer than I’ve ever felt in my entire life, and that’s precisely why I had to leave.

“Um...” She goes quiet on the other line.

“Sorry,” I bring my hand up to cover my eyes, “I shouldn’t have asked you that.”

“No, uh, it’s fine,” Isla mutters. “She hasn’t said much, only that you left without a word.”

“Fuck,” I curse under my breath. I feel like my heart just cracked, and my sister gave me barely a scrap of information.

I have no right to feel heartbroken, I’m the one who did all the breaking. I scrub a hand over my face, my palm grazing over the rough stubble that brushes my jawline.

Fuck. I was a coward. I never wanted to see those hazel eyes laced with hurt. I didn’t want to see the pain that I was going to cause, so I just left. I left like a fucking coward.

I ignored the calls that came through in those first few days, not wanting to hear her voice asking me when I was coming back, not wanting to have to tell her that I wasn’t going to.

I hated myself for what I did to her, but I never had to face her, not until now.

Now I have to stand across the aisle from the girl who I was falling in love with, the girl who I considered dropping everything for, the girl who must be so fucking angry with me.

If I know anything about Marina, it’s that it doesn’t matter if it’s been four years–the girl knows how to hold a grudge. And this time I can’t blame her.

But in the four years that she’s probably spent hating me, all I’ve done is hate myself too.

I’ve never been able to forget about her, never been able to go more than a couple of days without wondering about her, without missing her laugh, and her soft skin, and her spark for life. The one that I feel like I've been missing ever since I walked out that door.

“She, um, she knows you’re coming. She’s known from the beginning, well, because she saw you last year.” Hearing the wobble of worry in Isla’s voice makes me take a breath. I try to digest all of this information, but I can barely swallow it down.

Marina has known, she’s had time to prepare herself for this, for seeing the bastard who left her all those years ago without a single word of goodbye. I’ve got a week. One week to steel myself to stand mere feet away from the girl who used to own my heart—who maybe still does.

I lean forward, my elbows pressing into the muscles of mythighs. I can barely think straight, let alone know what to say right now. “I’ve got to go, Isla, I’ll see you next week.”

“Okay, I love you. I’m sorry.”

I slump down in the bench seat, resting my head back against the wood. “I love you too. Bye.”

My eyes screw shut once the call hangs up. I don’t know if I’m ready to see Marina, even after all of this time, but I don’t have a choice.

chapter two

MILES

PAST

I sighas I push open the heavy wooden door with the wordsBub’s pubscrawled on the front.

I didn’t even have time to take my uniform off before making my way to the nearest bar I could find from my summer house. Even if it’s one with a slightly questionable name.

That’s a lie. I had time, I just didn’t feel like pulling a beer from my fridge and drinking it in the silence of my own company. No, tonight I want noise around me. I want to fall into other people’s conversations, listen to stories about other people’s lives instead of mine, even if it’s from a distance, from down the other end of the bar.

I got demoted today.

Well, that’s kind of dramatic. I was asked to ‘take a break’. For the sake of my sanity, of course, when really, the only time I truly feel sane is when I’m thousands of feet up in the air.

They don’t think I’m insane, at least I don’t think they do. My boss is just convinced I need to take some time for myself before I burn out. He and the chief think I’m overworking myself. Maybe I am. But what I know is that the last thing I want is abreak.

A bell chimes above my head as I walk into the dim space, my ears tuning into the sound of a soccer game playing from the big TV in the corner. Good, at least I can distract my brain by watching grown men roll around on the ground like toddlers when they so much as stub their toe.

I take another slow step, allowing my senses time to adjust to the smell of stickiness floating through the still air. That sounds weird, but I swear I can smell when surfaces are sticky, and this place reeks of it.

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