AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Let's go!"
FORTY-THREE
ADDISON
Swerving his truck into the abandoned old diner parking lot, I sighed. So much had changed in four years. The once small town had expanded, and now the old mom-and-pop diner was replaced with fancy chain restaurants.
"Are you still hungry?" Maddox cocked a dark brow shoving his door open. I shook my head no as I slipped out of the truck. I wasn't hungry, but I felt like I needed to get something off my chest.
I followed the path I'd walked many times throughout high school, pushed the old chain link fence to the side, and slipped into the old train yard. Maddox followed without saying a word. Memories flooded back to the first night he'd followed me out here. The night I thought Maddox and I had become friends.
I was wrong.
We stopped in front of my old train car, still covered with the paint I'd put there so many years ago.
"I started painting after my dad died." I stared at my faded artwork. It had been my own form of therapy. My chest squeezed painfully tight as I remembered the first time I'd come here and why. "It became my release. My way to escape reality. The one place I could come and forget about everything going wrong in my world." It was my way to channel all my pent-up emotions into something healing, a way to free myself from the pain, and I'd let Maddox steal that from me.
Maddox slid onto one of the old stacked pallets of wood beside me. "The first time I came out here was the summer after my dad died. She started drowning her sorrows in whatever clear liquid she could find, and it wasn't long before she started to bring strange men home." Maddox knew some of this already, but I felt like I needed to get it out, to say it out loud, and he was here. "She brought a man home that night, and he found his way to my bed, and she was too drunk to protect me." My heart clenched at the memory, and my voice began to shake. "I escaped him and his grubby hands." I shrugged. "This is where I ended up."
"You came out here to escape home," he said more as a statement than a question.
"Yeah." I nodded, and a flicker of pain shot through me. I swallowed past the lump forming in my throat. "And now she's gone." I paused as a tidal wave of emotions washed over me. Sadness. Anger. Frustration. Fear but mostly Anger. "I'm angry." My voice trembled as my vision blurred with tears threatening to fall. "So angry that now I will never get the chance to tell her that what she did was so fucked up." Maddox reached for me, but I threw a hand out, stopping him. I didn't want his comfort right now. "Now, I'll never get to fix what was broken between us. I'll never get that closure I needed." I twisted to face him. "I let what happened here, between us, keep me from coming back here after I left."
"I wasn't here." He scowled. "I was in Florida with you."
"I know." I smiled. "But coming back here meant remembering, and all I wanted to do was forget."
"Addison," he sighed, "I'm sorry..."
"No, Maddox." I forced a smile. "I'm not telling you any of this because I want you to apologize. I'm telling you because I can't let what happened between my mom and me happen to us. I can't let another unresolved issue go without dealing with it and lose the chance to resolve it."
"Okay," Maddox said, pushing to his feet. My gaze trailed up, locking on his. "Let's resolve this then."
Here went nothing...
"You hurt me," I unleashed every painful emotion I'd been holding in. "I loved you, and you destroyed me."
Pain flickered in his eyes as his expression softened. "I'm so sor—" he whispered apologetically.
"But I can't let what happened all those years ago hold me back anymore," I said, cutting him off and not giving him a chance to make excuses. I didn't want his apology. I just wanted to move past this. "I forgive you." I didn't know if I would ever be able to forget what he did or trust him again, but I needed to forgive him. Not for him but for me. "I heard everything you said at the hotel, but all I can offer you is friendship." I wiped away the one tear that managed to escape.
"I'll take it." He smiled, reaching down and grabbing an old paint can. "What do you say?" He tossed me the can of paint.
A smile spread across my face as I caught the can. "I think this paint is old and probably doesn't work anymore."
"I think you might be surprised." He waggled his brows. Pressing down on the tiny cap, it blew red paint across the train. My questioning gaze snapped up to his. "Every time I came home, I replaced the paint." His throat bobbed on a hard swallow. "I guess I hoped I'd run into you." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "I left a message for you every time I came." His phone lit up the artwork, revealing all the messages he'd left for me over the years.
I was in shock, completely lost for words as I gaped at the wall. At all the words he'd written to me.
{{I miss you.}}
{{I'm sorry for hurting you.}}
{{I still love you.}}
{{You deserved so much more.}}
{{There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about you.}}
