Page 98 of From West, With Regret

I don’t tell him to stop asking me, though. I get it. He’sworried about me. We’re both wandering through uncharted territory, and I know the dam breaking on my memories isn’t as perfect as I’d always imagined it to be.

Over the past few months, West and I have lived a separate life from our pasts. Now our pasts have collided with our present, the future is more uncertain than ever.

We haven’t spoken much since we left our old foster home behind. I know he’s giving me space, and I need it. I constantly twist my fingers in my lap, trying to focus on the good memories. The ones with West. But then the flash of the star-speckled sky comes to mind, and I feel his hand over my mouth, starving me of oxygen.

I go from warm and happy, to cold and terrified. Calm and still, to frozen, shaking with fear.

West parks his car in his designated spot and flips off the engine. Without a word, he steps out of the car, and within three seconds, he’s opening my door and scooping me up into his arms.

I can’t stop my teeth from chattering or the chill that’s embedded itself in my bones. My whole body hurts. I don’t know why when I haven’t physically exerted myself other than sprinting down the road and into the woods in high heels, but all the energy has been sucked out of me. Physically, my mind is all over the place.

I drape my arms around his neck and rest my head on his sturdy chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. He rests the side of his face against the top of my head, and I can hear every word he’s saying without him ever speaking.

He holds me tightly. His large hands mold to my body and I’m aware of every touch point, like connecting stars to a constellation. He carries me all the way to the elevator and up to his floor. When he steps over the threshold, he loosens his grip andlowers me.

We’re home.

My feet have barely touched the floor when I fall against him, collapsing in his arms.

Sobbing uncontrollably, I clutch onto his shoulders. He’s no longer wearing his suit jacket. The soft fabric of his button-down shirt slips across my skin. I hang my head low, unable to lift it long enough to look into his eyes.

Then I fall to the floor. My knees slam against the hardwood before I catch myself from face planting the mahogany. Tears slip from my tired eyes, splashing to the carpet/tiling beneath me.

“London.” The broken tone in West’s voice causes another wrack of sobs to escape my fractured ribcage. “I don’t know what to do, baby. Tell me what you need.”

I shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut. Why does my past have to be so ugly? Why are the horrifying memories tearing apart the new, good ones?

When I think about it, I’m not only crying over the memory of my attack. I’m crying over all my memories of West. Every single one beautiful in its own way only to be left stranded and abandoned for fifteen years.

It’s all too much, and guiltily, for a moment, I wish I hadn’t regained my memories. I wish this sense of dread and emptiness would go away.

Clawing at the floor, I want to scream, but nothing comes out. Only silence. I open my mouth wide and force air in, focusing on my lungs, picturing them expanding, filling with life.

“What do you need?” he asks again, running his hand over my back. “Baby, please, tell me.”

I sniff as tears stream to the floor, then I close my eyes and breathe in the memory of West kissing my cheek before the lasttime I’d seen him. Standing in the doorway to his bedroom of the foster home.

I strain my neck to lift my head, meeting West’s gaze. He’s crying again the way he was out in the woods with me earlier.

“I… I don’t know.”

He lifts his free hand and massages the back of his neck. He’s drowning, and so am I.

I find his kind blue eyes, clinging to them like a life raft bobbing aimlessly in the middle of an open ocean.

“Just love me,” I whisper. “I just need you to love me.”

And he does.

Slowly, he reaches out, slipping my coat over my shoulders. He’s gentle and precise, never once taking his eyes off mine as he scoots closer to me, running his hands down the length of my arms as the coat falls to the floor. My shoulders are exposed, but I don’t shiver. His touch warms me from the outside in. He’s reaching deep in my bones and into my soul, breaking the cold festering inside.

Then his hands meet my jaw. Then my nose. My cheekbone, just below my eye. He’s studying me. Admiring me.

“I love you,” he says, softly, as gentle as an afternoon breeze. He kisses my forehead.

I reach up and loosen his tie. It unravels beneath my dirt-laced fingernails. I shove the memory of what happened in the woods aside and focus on West. His touch and his voice. I wrap myself up in the only comfort I’ve ever truly known: him.

“I love you,” he says, tugging on the ends of the bows of my dress straps; two thin pieces of fabric tied together on my shoulders. They fall when they come undone, and his hands graze over my collarbones before he slips the top of my dress down, revealing my bare chest.

---