Page 64 of Chasing You

“I know it doesn’t make sense!” I run a hand through my hair, pushing my curls out of my face, they’re doing nothing but annoy me right now, just adding to the heat crawling up my neck. “Sorry, Rosalie, I’m sorry.”

“Come here,” she says, dragging me into a hug. “It’s okay.”

Just feeling the warmth of Rosalie’s arms around me makes tears well in my eyes. All of the pent-up stress that has been building since the day Miles left bubbles up to the surface as I lean my chin on her shoulder.

Over the last two months, I’ve spent every waking moment possible falling in love with Miles Beckett. He always leaves, taking flights around the world, but he’s always come back, up until now.

It’s never been more than a week before Miles is walking back through those doors, his smile beaming at me. And even when he’s not here, he’s constantly messaging me, letting me know when he’s getting on a flight and as soon as he’s landed. But this time, nothing.

Just like Rosalie, my first instinct was that something has happened to him, that he was in some disastrous crash or something horrible like that. But the more I forced myself to think logically, I knew that wasn’t the case. Because when I woke up on that first day, he was gone. No note left, no text, nothing to let me know where he’d gone. I assumed he’d been called to a flight last minute, but with every day that passed with no word, I’d understood what he’d done. He’d left.

He left me.

He walked away from us in the middle of the night without a word. And I’ve spent every day since denying it. Spamming hisphone with texts and calls, just waiting for the day he will pick up, but he still hasn’t done it.

“Why don’t you take the rest of the night off?” Rosie says, finally letting me go from her embrace.

“No, I want to keep busy.”

“Marina,” she reaches behind me, untying my apron until it falls from my hips. “Go home, you can come back tomorrow.”

But nowhere feels like home without Miles here.

I just nod before I grab my bag from where I chucked it under the bar earlier and make my way out into the cool night's air.

I take a deep breath, breathing in the non-sticky air out here. Just the thought makes me long to hear Miles’s voice. To feel his skin on mine, to hear his laugh on the wind that whips my hair across my face. The wind that rips at the tears laying in waiting in my eyes.

I throw my hair behind me and storm my way to Miles’s house. It takes me five minutes' worth of angry stomping before I’m standing at the gigantic wooden front door.

“Miles!” I scream through the wood, banging my hand against the door. “Miles get your ass out here before I knock this door down!” I put the weight of my entire body into my voice, letting out every single sliver of pain spearing into my heart.

I throw my fist into the door with the weight of my entire body behind me. “Why?!”

When I pull my hand back, I can feel the raw skin on the side of my fist, but it doesn’t stop me from doing it again. “Why would you leave me here?!” I scream again, tears spilling over the brim of my eyelids.

All of my emotions are a swirling hurricane within my body, sending my mind every which way, like my brain is knocking against my skull, aching to be let out so it can be free of the pain my heart is sending its way. But it can’t be free, and neither can I.

“Fuck you!” I slam my palm against the wood once more. “Fuck you,” I sob as I press my forehead against the door, tearsstreaming down my face now as quick as a waterfall falling over an edge.

I spin around, letting the weight of my body fall against the strong door. “Where did you go?” I whisper, looking up to the sky, as if I’ll see a plane go by and he’ll be the one stepping off it. But I don’t see a plane, I just see a blurry, empty sky above me, watery through my tears.

“Why didn’t you take me with you?” I sob, letting my legs collapse as I sink down until I’m sitting with my knees to my chest and my head in my hands. My entire body shakes as I violently sob on the doorstep of the man who walked away from me. I can feel myself hyperventilating, my breaths struggling to get through the river of tears.

I dig my nails into the palms of my hands, trying to focus my pain somewhere else, trying to stop the tears by distracting myself, but nothing can distract me from this. From this whirlwind still raging inside of me. I don’t know how to make it stop, and I don’t know if it ever will.

I lean my head back against the door and let my legs out long. Opening my body to let my lungs fill with air. I take shaky breaths. In two, three, four. Out two, three, four.

I sit here staring up at the sky, repeating the breathing sequence until I can feel my heartbeat slowing back down to a safe level.

I sit here for another hour, letting myself grieve the fact that I will never come back to this place. I refuse to ever come down this street again, to ever see this house again, to walk through this door. If Miles wants to walk away from us, then I’ll walk away too.

I’ll walk away from the hope that he’ll ever come back, walk away from the way that he made me feel, even if it’s going to split me in half to take that first step.

I push myself up onto my feet. Push my hair behind my ears, and wipe my tears away on the back of my hand, and then I take a step.

chapter twenty-eight

MILES

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