Page 114 of Between Never and Forever
I wait for her to say something, anything, but she doesn’t. She just stares blankly and keeps her mouth shut for what feels like years. The more breaths I take in the quiet, the more tense my shoulders grow. The angrier I become.
I don’t know what I want from her in this moment. An apology? A confession? Would anything even be good enough? I just want more than she’s giving me. I want more than I’ve gotten over the last eight years. I want more than what I was left with in that small house in Miami when I was eighteen. A giant decision with no right answer, and the only person I’d ever loved walking away from me for the second time.
When Savannah finally speaks, I’m a lit fuse attached to almost a decade’s worth of dynamite.
“Why didn’t you contact me? I could have helped.”
“And interrupt your glamorous rockstar lifestyle? It was too much for you when it was just a baby to deal with, remember? No way in hell you’d be willing to accept a babyandcancer.”
She grits her teeth, and her nostrils flare.
“That’s not fair, and you know it.”
I scoff.
“What’s not fair is you pushing me away when I was begging you not to. What’s not fair is you hearing me say I loved you and then kicking me out of your house. I wantedyou, Savannah. I wanted you, but you didn’t want me enough to put up with everything that came with me.”
My voice shakes more and more with each word, and it’s difficult to keep from shouting. I’d have taken her with everything. With all of it. Even if she was still a stripper in Miami—if that was all she’d ever be—I’d still have wanted her to be mine. If she’d never left her mother’s house. If she’d stayed in our small town, I’d have run away with her after graduation. I’d have kept her safe.
None of it would have happened at all if she’d have just stayed.
I did want her to be mine. She just didn’t want me.
“I did what I had to do for the both of us,” she spits out. “I didn’t have a choice. You were having a baby. There wasn’t going to be any room for me in your life—”
“That’s bullshit.Youdidn’t have room formeinyourlife. In your exciting new life. In your big, bright career plans. You didn’t want to deal with me and my complicated future while you were on tour building yours. That wasn’t for both of us. That was foryou. You couldn’t even—"
“I couldn’t save you, Levi!”
She shouts the words, then immediately closes the distance between us while lowering her voice to a harsh whisper. I can feel her breath slam into my chest, words hitting like silent bullets, punctuated by a deluge of angry tears.
“Don’t you get it? I couldn’t save you. I was too busy trying to save myself. And yeah, I know that’s selfish. But do you know how hard it was to go from not caring if I lived or died to actually trying to be something? To try and make myself into someone I didn’t hate when I looked in the mirror? And then—”
Savannah chokes back a sob, swiping roughly at her tears, then reaching up and tugging on her brown hair. Her eyelids flutter, then clamp shut as she shakes her head.
“Jesus, Levi, I was in love with you. I loved you more than anything. More thaneverything. Do you know how much it would have hurt to watch you put them first? Do you know how hard it would have been for me to eventually,inevitably, be pushed out of your perfect life with your perfect new wife and perfect baby? It would have killed me, Levi. It would have fucking killed me. For eighteen fucking years, I’d been a punching bag. An afterthought. A burden and a fantasy and nothing important toanyonebut you. And that was going to change, and I couldn’t handle it. So, I’m sorry you had to deal with the consequences of your actions at eighteen. I’m sorry you think I failed you, that I was a bad friend, but I’m not sorry I saved myself. And if you’ve hated me for the last eight years because of it, well then—”
“I had to,” I force out, and she startles.
For seconds, we stare at each other in silence. Just the sound of the wind, and the storm in the distance, and our rapid breathing fill the air around us.
When she finally speaks, it’s a jagged, terrified whisper.
“What does that mean?”
“I had to hate you, Savannah.”
I hold her gaze. Her eyes are filled to the brim and overflowing with tears, and in the darkening twilight, not even the moon can compete with her shimmering irises.
A hurricane. A tempest. A violent force of nature.
The only kind I’ve ever looked forward to.
“Ihadto hate you, or I would resent them. I would resent them for making me lose you, for taking away the only thing I ever so desperately wanted, and they didn’t deserve that. Neither of them did, but especially not Brynn. For their sake, for mine, Ihadto hate you. I’ve thought of you every single day. Even when I didn’t want to. Even when I tried not to. You’re in my dreams. You’re in my head and my chest and my fucking blood, Savannah. Ihadto hate you, or I wouldn’t have been able to move forward. Not even a little. Not at all.”
Our chests are heaving, our panted breaths mingle in the space between our bodies. The breeze kicks up, tousling the strands of her brown hair and giving her that fierce look I remember from when we were younger.
Swirling, slate gray eyes. Wild, untamed hair.
