Page 78 of Back to You
"Yeah, I’m fine."
"The bakery’s been busy."
"No, I don’t need anything."
Then, I started letting the calls go to voicemail. At first, I told myself I’d call him back later. When I wasn’t so tired. When my head wasn’t pounding. When the weight in my chest wasn’t so suffocating. But later never came.
Then I started leaving his texts on read, not because I wanted to ignore him, and not because I didn’t care, but because I cared too much.
Because every time his name flashed across my screen, my stomach twisted, and my heart lurched into my throat, and suddenly, I felt like I was suffocating all over again.
His messages were never demanding, never frustrated. He was always patient, loving, and kind.
Sebastian
"Thinking about you."
"Hope today isn’t too hard."
"Call me when you can."
Not if you can, or if you want to—but when…As if there was no doubt in his mind that I would. As if he still believed I was capable of reaching for him, but I wasn’t.
So, I let the texts pile up, each unread message like a stone on my chest, pressing down, down, down. The ugly truth was that I wasn’t avoiding him because of work, or exhaustion, or even a busy schedule. I was avoiding him because he looked at me like I was still me, like I was still the girl he’d loved since we were teenagers, like I hadn’t been gutted by grief, like there was still something left of me to hold onto.
I was avoiding him because no matter how hard I tried to ignore the guilt pressing against my ribs, I couldn’t stop the way my heart lurched every time I saw his name on my screen.
Because every time I heard his voice, every time I saw his texts, every time I let myself think about how unwavering his love for me has been, I couldn’t stop myself from also thinking about what it would feel like if I lost him too, and it killed me.
I loved Sebastian, this much I knew. I had always loved him, but, if I let myself have that, if I let myself fall all the way, love him the way I wanted to, the way I ached too…it would only hurt more when I lost him too. The truth is, people always leave, and love always ends in loss, and I wasn’t sure I could survive more, more loss.
So, I let the silence stretch between us, and I let the grief consume me.
CHAPTER 35
Mariana
Iknew it was coming, I had been waiting for it. I was the one who let the silence stretch too far, let it grow too thick, until it wasn’t space anymore… It was a wall.
A heavy, suffocating wall built brick by brick with every unanswered call, every ignored text, every time I let my phone ring in my hand until it went silent again.
Sebastian had given me time, more than I sure as hell deserved. He had called, texted, checked in, even when I gave him nothing to hold on to.
He had waited for me…fuck, he had waited, for me to come back to him, for me to let him in. He had been waiting all this time for me to stop pushing, stop running, stop letting my grief and my fear swallow me whole.
But I never did, I couldn’t, my fear had crippled me. My fear wouldn’t allow me to do anything other than choose what felt safe—distance, silence, and escape route.
And in spite of all of that, in spite of everything I’ve put him through these last few weeks, here he was, still standing on the other side of that wall, still refusing to walk away. And shit, I am so damn scared of what I have to say, of what I have to do right now.
The knock at the door was sharp, deliberate, and unyielding. A sound that cracked through the quiet of my house, splintering the fragile calm I had spent the last few weeks trying to convince myself was real.
I had been sitting on the couch, staring at nothing, numb from the inside out. But now, with the sound of him at my door, everything inside me locked up, I was frozen.
My pulse thundered in my ears, my breath lodged somewhere between my ribs, my body stuck between fight and flight, knowing neither would save me from what was coming. I stared at the door, heart hammering, waiting for the moment I’d have to destroy him.
"Don’t answer it."
"If you don’t answer, he’ll leave."
