“Simon, I told you –”
“I wasn’t failing, Willow. I was living. Waking up in the morning is hard for me too. Sometimes, I don’t want to. More often than not, my first thought used to be of the day I found my mother. It would terrify me, every time I opened my eyes in the morning, going through the same cycle of emotions I went through that day. I always found it better to just not go to sleep, at all. But then I met you.”
Her chin tips up and she arches toward me. Her voice doesn’t have the stern cadence she probably wants to portray when she whispers, “I d-don’t care.”
I lean down, bringing us even closer. “I met you and every thought I had became yours. I started looking forward to waking up in the morning. I started to look forward to going to work. Walking the same hallways as my father did. It wasn’t a chore. Living. It wasn’t something I had to do. Living became something I wanted to do.”
I hear the rustle of her soaked jacket that was draped around her arms falling to the floor. She puts her hands on my chest, pushing me, and despite the situation and the unresolved issues between us, my cold body heats up at our first contact after months.
“I told you I don’t care.”
Taking my hands off the door, I cup her soft cheeks. “I never believed that I could love. I never thought I even knew what the word meant. I was too broken. Too cold and buried inside myself. I was too much in hate with my past and all the things that happened. And then, you happened to me, Willow. I never thought we could have something beyond Heartstone. Every day I counted down the days I had left with you. I was counting down the days of my life. Because I knew the moment you walked out of those gates, I’d die. I’d stop living.”
I wipe her tears but more keep coming, tightening that band around my chest. “You’re… fucking perfect. So perfect and beautiful and innocent. A princess. You deserve a king. A true hero. Someone to fight alongside you. I never thought I could be that hero. Not with my mistakes and hang-ups and my battle with the past. But then, I realized a hero isn’t someone who doesn’t fall. A hero is someone who knows how to rise.”
And then, I say it. The three words I never thought I’d say to anyone. I never thought I’d even feel them. But she knew. She always knew that we had something between us.
“I love you, Willow,” I whisper, raggedly. “I fucking love you so much.”
She sobs, and her hands become fists in my shirt as she tries to push me again. “Then why did you leave? Why the fuck did you leave? Why did you say all those things to me? Why did you break my heart to the point where I lost my mind?”
Her words make me bleed. Her words make me think of all the times I wanted to knock on her door and apologize. The times I’ve wanted to confess, to tell her everything.
“Willow –”
“No, stop talking.” She shakes her head, trying to control herself. “Just stop talking. You don’t get to come here and say all these things to me and expect everything to go back to normal.”
She slaps my chest. “You broke my heart, Simon. You fucking shattered it. Do you know I looked for you? The next morning. I fucking looked for you. I waited for you every night in my room. Even after you said all those things to me. I waited for you. But you never came back. Not once did you come back. So I don’t care if you love me because I hate you. I fucking hate you so much.”
She pushes against me again, for the third time, her cheeks red with her emotions. I don’t like to see her struggle like this, and I would’ve moved away. I would’ve let her go, taken my punishment without a word.
If it were true. If she hadn’t said that one thing.
That one thing makes me push back. It makes me reach behind her and find the knob on the door, opening it. I maneuver her body with mine and she stumbles on her feet, gasping. I grab her arm to keep her standing and close the door, at the same time.
“What the fuck are you doing?” She glares up at me before swiveling her gaze to the door.
Stepping closer, I block her view of anything but me. I back her up against the sink – apparently, it’s the washroom – and put my hands on the counter on either side of her so she can’t escape.