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I fold the sheets back, crawling on my hands and knees toward the edge of the bed. A lone picture frame sits on his dresser, propped right in the middle in front of his mirror. My hand reaches out, and I grab the black frame, pulling it toward me.
My fingers trace the young faces, my smiling one as I look at Roman. His arm is tossed over my shoulder, and I'm smushed up against his side. He's smiling at the camera, a genuinely happy smile covering his face. Pure happiness is seen on both of our faces.
Where did we go wrong? What happened to us?
Why did we ever separate when we already had everything we ever needed in each other?
I bring the picture to my chest, hugging it to me, wishing I could go back in time and right my wrongs. Wishing I could change so much. But I can't, and that's the most heartbreaking thing of all.
My head drops, and tears fall down my face in despair. A sob chokes out of me, and I can do nothing but mourn the time that I've lost and will never get back.
I hear his footsteps before I see him. I can sense him the closer he gets. Our electricity grows stronger with every inch that diminishes between us. The side of the bed dips, and his warm hand presses against my back. In a moment, he has me pulled into his arms, our picture squished between us as we hold each other.
"I'm so sorry," I cry, feeling like this is all my fault. If I never had left, we would've still been together. If I would have just went with him on tour, or we would have just left for New York, our lives could've been so different. Instead, we've lost five years of our lives apart from each other. So much time lost that I'll never be able to get back.
"You have nothing to be sorry for," he mumbles against my neck.
I peel back from him, looking at him through blurry eyes. "I do. It's all my fault. I wish I never left. I should have stayed home. Or went to New York. It was the biggest mistake of my life." A part of me hates saying that because I experienced so much. I learned so much, and I met some great people.
But those experiences meant I lost out on the love of my life, and none of that is worth losing him over. We could have grown together; we didn't need to do that apart.
He frowns at me. "What happened to you?"
I shake my head. I'm afraid if I tell him how ruined I've been, the horrible things I've done and what I've been through, he'll think differently of me. I won't be his Luna anymore, and that thought is heartbreaking enough for me to keep my mouth shut.
I roll off him, curling back underneath the sheets. I pull them up to my neck, feeling so lost and confused, and even alone. Because I know Roman will tear these words from me piece by piece, and any love he still holds onto, any thread that still connects between our two hearts, will be frayed.
"Luna," he demands.
I don't answer him, burrowing further into the pillows that smell like him, worried that this will be my only chance. So afraid that the bond we hold will be fractured by just a few words. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Well, we need to talk about it." He pulls the sheets back, ripping it away to the end of the bed. My head lifts off the pillow, and I scowl at him, my brows dipping low over my eyes. "Don't look at me like that. We're going to lay all this shit on the table. Right here. Right now. I'm not waiting another second."
"Another second for what?" My hand reaches toward my naked neck, my fingers clutching my throat when it feels like it's closing in on me.
He leans forward, leaning toward my face. I can feel his breath against my lips, and his dark brown eyes stare into my gray ones. It almost feels too much, like I need to lean away from his stare. I haven't been looked at like this in so long, like the meaning of the world is held in my irises. Like one touch could heal him and break him at the same time.
Roman's look is absolutely everything.
"I'm not going to let you leave this room until you talk to me. Come on, Luna. Just fucking talk to me. It'sme." He looks hurt by the fact that I'm keeping anything from him. This isn't how we were growing up. He knew every time my period started and stopped. He knew when I was having cramps. He knew when I was upset. He knew every inch of me. I knew almost every time he took a shit. We don't hide things, so the fact that I'm hiding something now isn't sitting well with him.
"I don't want you to think differently of me," I sigh, looking down at the sheets. For all I know, he might not even find me attractive anymore. I feel different, maybe I look different to him, too.
His hand goes to my face, running across my cheeks. His fingers go to my eyelids, dancing across my nose and down the side of my jaw. "You don’t have to be perfect, Luna, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t a masterpiece."
I breathe out, my heart beating from my chest. "I don't know where you want me to start."
"The beginning. I want you to start at the very beginning."
I look up at his white popcorn ceiling, tears filling my eyes and spilling down my temples. Roman's hands are there instantly, wiping them away before they fall to his sheets. "I met friends. We traveled, went to a lot of different places. Sleeping outside—"
"You were homeless?" He butts in, his face turning into a fierce frown.
I shrug, not really feeling like we were homeless, more or less just travelers. A lot of people are just like us, living and wandering across the lands. "No, I wasn't homeless. We lived in Arizona for a while. Then we moved to California, and eventually I went to Maui, by myself."
"Where'd your friends go?"
I bite my tongue, the sharp pain helping me tamper down the scream that wants to break free. "They died. Some of them died."
