Avery
Ifeel dirty. Not just from the dust and debris from falling god-knows how many feet into an unknown cellar, but from the way my body reacted to being in his arms. I swear, I was about ten seconds away from declaring my undying love for the man.What the hell is wrong with me?Don’t I have any self-respect? I can't go throwing myself at him like nothing happened. As if he didn't just up and leave me… After all the years of grief he caused, he doesn't get to waltz back into my life and expect me to come running back into his arms. Ha! I don't think so.I’m far stronger than that. Stronger than his brooding green eyes and perfectly mussed up hair. And tougher than his broad shoulders, strong and secure arms, and those bad-boy tattoos that really do something interesting to my insides whenever I look at them…Wait! No! They do nothing—nothing—for me! I don’t even like tattoos!
Ugh. Who am I kidding? My body remembers the man like it was yesterday I was lying in his arms.
Sighing, I move myself to the furthest part of the cellar, deciding I need to keep my distance as far away from him as possible. Despite my body’s reaction to Tyler, I am smart enough to protect my heart. Worming his way back into my life isn’t as simple as buying our old hangout and getting me trapped in a cellar with no cell reception and no way to escape.
Now, I heard that life can be cruel, but I never thought it would do me likethis.My life isn't perfect, not in the slightest, but I think I was finally in a place where I’d gotten over him abandoning me. It took a solid decade, but I stopped looking for him, searching for his name and watching him from afar. In the last few months, I had managed to refrain from typing his name in the search bar even once. I was finally feelingnormal.Life was normal!
And now here he is, looking the way he looks and making me feel the way I feel. I really do hate him.
You love him.
Oh, shut up, heart!
Feeling my way around the room, I continue to look for a way out of this hellhole, hoping to find an escape hatch or secret lever to pull—something to get me away from this emotional pit of lost time and forgotten futures. Theremustbe a way out of here.
While I hunt around and mutter to myself, Tyler searches through the shelves, sifting through books and magazines before opening one up and letting out a low whistle as the center folds out into a long poster. “Do you know what I could really go for right now?” he says, sliding the magazines back on the shelf.
I pause and give him a shrug. “A ladder?”
“Nah.” He picks up one of the books and holds it between his big hands as he leans against the wall. “A hot-fudge brownie sundae. Is Old Nan's ice-cream still as good as I remember?"
“I couldn’t pretend to know what you remember, Tyler,” I say, staring at the two sets of shelves, my mind running around in circles.Maybe I could fashion some sort of ladder frombothof these… That might be tall enough to get us out of here.But how can I make it stable enough to support my weight?I don’t even have any rope to use… Ugh. Back to square one.
"I remember that it was your favorite. You weren’t a fan of the nuts, but you always ordered it with them anyway so you could give them to me.”
“The actions of a naïve schoolgirl,” I say, hands on my hips as I turn my back to him, my eyes pricking at the memory. I used to adore him. If he’d told me he preferred the stars to the moon, I would have found a way to make them shine brighter just so I could see him smile more.
“You were never naïve, Ave,” he says. “You just cared. You saw the good in people when they didn’t think they had any good in them.”
A tear escapes my eye, and I swipe angrily at it for breaking free. I don’t want to remember those things. I don’t want to remember the boy he was, alone and abused, unwanted by the very people who were supposed to want him most.Iwanted him. Back then, I would do anything to make his day just a tiny bit brighter. But it was never enough. I wasn’t enough.
“Remember that bird we found?” he continues, his voice feeling more intimate than before, like he knows he’s getting to me. “The vet said we couldn’t help it, but you insisted you could. You made that brace out of paperclips and—”
"Will you stop!" I whirl around to glare at him. I'm stressed out enough that I'm down here, being here withhim,reminding me of how pathetic I used to be, makes the situation even worse. I can’t deal with this right now. In fact, notever. "I donotwant to reminisce with you. Read the room, Tyler. I don’t want to talk. Learn to take a hint."
He sets his book to the side and looks at me before he places a hand to his chest, patting his heart like I’ve wounded him. "Why don't you want to talk to me?"
"Because you left me, Tyler. You broke my heart, and youleftme!" My voice cracks, and my eyes become hot. I bite my lip in an attempt to stop the tears from coming.Oh please, Avery, don't cry in front of him. He doesn't deserve any more of your tears."I don't think there is any coming back from that, Tyler. It's too late.”
Working his jaw from side to side, he rakes a hand through his dark hair before he walks toward me, his intense green eyes still boring into mine. I step back, my instinct to protect myself from the uncontrollable wave of desire I’ll have if he gets anywhere near me. Just watching him move is enough to set me off. He has that swagger about him that only a handful of guys can pull off and still look cool doing it. When we were at school, the girls swoonedhardover his bad boy facade. But I was the only one he ever spent time with. I guess that’s why I felt so special. Until I wasn’t.
"Can I at least explainwhyI left?" he says, stopping a few feet away from me, his hands fisting closed like he’s trying to stop himself from reaching for me.
“No.” With nowhere else to go, I press myself into the wall behind me. “Maybe in the beginning I would have listened. Maybe even five years later, I would have listened as well. But it's been adecade, Tyler." My voice gets louder and louder as I pump more and more of my anger, more venom, into my words, "More than that, actually—eleven whole years. And now, well, I've moved on, and I don't want to hear it. Your excuses won't change anything.”
I turn away from him, breaking our eye contact and putting as much distance between us as I can. I don't want him to see the lies in my eyes—the lies of my heart.I could never move on from him.
