Page 139 of I Never Stopped Loving You

He wraps his arms tighter around me, and I can feel something warm fall on my cheek. Is he crying?

“I went to your house that night after all of the cops and ambulances left. I felt like part of me died that night. Maybe it was part of my soul that always belonged to you. All I know is seeing all that blood…” He sharply inhales as if the memory alone is causing him pain. “I begged the universe not to let it have been your blood, but when I saw Mr. Snuggles, I lost it. I became depressed and withdrawn from everyone. The only thing that helped was the fact that the news said that they believed your dad took you and ran, but I still searched for you. Jeremy and my mom were the only things that kept me going, but then my mom died. I felt like the universe was punishing me for failing to protect you.”

“Noah,” I gasp.

I lift my head and gently cup his cheek. Tears fill his eyes, and some spill over to run down his cheeks. Knowing how much pain he’s been in all these years because he was searching for me hurts.

“We were just kids. There was nothing we could do. I…I don’t remember much of my childhood, obviously,” I force a small laugh, and I see the corner of his lips tilt in a small smile. “But I do remember how much I feared my father. You didn’t fail at protecting me, Noah. The rest of the world did.”

I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him closer pressing our foreheads together. His eyes close as his fingers trail up and down my back.

“The others who saw the marks on my mom and me and chose to ignore them are the ones who failed to protect me. You went there that night. You got my favorite stuffed animal. You fixed him and kept him all these years. And you were the one who never stopped searching for me.”

“I’d do it all again if I had to, Willow. You mean everything to me,” he says with such reverence.

“I’m sorry I didn’t remember. I’m sorry that you’ve been in so much pain all these years.”

“It was worth it. I knew I’d find you one day…Even though you were actually the one who found me,” he laughs, and I can’t help but laugh as well.

“I guess it was just meant to be,” I say quietly.

I rest my head back against his chest and listen as his heart rate finally begins to level out.

“It was fate,” he whispers.

He kisses the top of my head as he holds me. I’ve never felt the level of peacefulness and protection that I do when I’m in his arms. Now that I know it isn’t just something random, my mind finally accepts it for what it is. A connection we built when we were young, and he kept feeling it even after all these years. I just wish my mind had let me remember him sooner.

My muscles tense at the irritation of it all, and I know he feels it. He tilts my chin up so he can look into my eyes.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I hate that my mind blocked everything out. I hate that it made me forget you.”

“Hey, you didn’t forget me. I’ve always been right here.” He places his hand over my heart, and I can feel the heat of his palm even through the layers of clothes. “When you didn’t recognize me that day and refused to talk about your childhood before you moved to Texas, I started looking more into PTSD.”

My head slightly tilts as I look at him. He looked into what I was suffering from to make sure he didn’t push me or hurt me more.

“Sometimes your mind chooses to protect the memories that mean the most to you, along with protecting you from the bad ones. Basically, your mind puts all the good into one box and the bad into another. Unfortunately, those boxes were still near each other. As we’ve been hanging out more, your mind recognized the connection we always had and began to allow your body to remember, but with the good comes the bad. I think that’s why you had such a bad panic attack from seeing the crime scene photos. It pushed the bad right to the forefront of your mind, and you were overwhelmed.”

“How could you keep this to yourself for so long?” I ask.

“Oh, Jeremy knows.”

“He knows who I am?”

“Who you are, what you mean to me…He knows everything, Willow.”

“Can I ask you a question?” I ask.

“Of course. Anything.”

There’s been something bothering me since he said he’s been searching for me since that night.

“Veronica said you seem to date women who only look similar to me.”

I watch his face slightly shift in the moonlight. There's a look of embarrassment and shame, but I don’t want him to feel like that.

“Yes. No one could ever be you, but I did date women who had similar features to what I thought you would look like, but trust me, none of them compared to you. No one could ever have your deep forest green eyes or your soft strawberry blonde hair. No one else could make me feel the way I do when I’m with you. They were poor substitutions that I needed to try and get through all these years. I never dated them for long, and Jeremy always teased me because of it.”