not to do… She vowed to never leave me, to never leave my side… but there she was. Walking away.
My Lila left, as the pain piercing through my chest became more than unbearable.
All my truths, all my lies collided together – my future with Lila was now cracked open, shattered and bleeding, as I knelt in the wreckage of it all.
Once again…alone.
Once again… lost.
She lied, too.
She broke her promises, too.
You won’t lose me, ever.
Pinky promise?
Pinky promise.
All the promises we made to each other, in the end… none of it mattered.
In the end, we lost our way, and our happy ending faded away.
15
Lila
Not all right decisions feel like they are right. Sometimes, they gut you from within and tear you apart. Right decisions should be easy to make, but they rarely are.
I had a choice, and I wanted to believe I made the right one.
The good choice, the right decision.
Walking away from Maddox was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life, but I had to…
Not for me. But for him.
Maddox was my boyfriend, but first and foremost… he was my best friend. I knew him better than he knew himself. I could see inside him, so clearly, and Maddox, my God, he was so lost in that moment, and I needed him to see things clearly.
I waited for the wave of regret that had been crashing through me, since I walked away from him. It came and went, similar to the wave of pain. Always there, always constant. But still, I told myself I made the right decision.
For the last three weeks, Maddox tried calling. He knocked on our door multiple times a day. He talked to Riley, tried to convince her to let him inside… to let him talk to me. But Riley was loyal to a fault. She didn’t know why I had to walk away, but she knew how much it hurt me.
I never ran away from my problems, but I had to run away from Maddox. He was my one weakness, and I knew the moment I took a look at his broken stare, his wounded blue eyes – I’d fall back into his arms. It would turn into a vicious, never-ending cycle.
“Hey, Lila!” I flinched away from my thoughts and turned toward the sound of my name.
My co-worker snapped her fingers in my face and gave me a questioning look. “Stop day-dreaming. No time for that.”
I wiped my wet hands on my apron. “I’ll serve the next table.” I went to take the tray from her hand, but she held it out of my way.
Amanda fished for something from the front pocket of her apron. She placed a blue post-it note, folded in half, in my open palm. “He told me to give you this.”
My heart thudded. “He?”
Amanda shrugged and walked away. I unfolded the note, and my heart cracked, my chest burning with misery.
You didn’t even give me a chance to kiss you goodbye.
I looked up and caught Maddox's eyes through the window of the restaurant. His tortured eyes held mine for a single second, a throbbing moment, a painful heartbeat, before he blinked and walked away. Maddox disappeared in the crowd, with only his note, as a reminder that he had been here.
We were strangers, once again.
This was more than a note about our last goodbye. He was letting me know he had given up. Maddox wasn’t going to fight for us anymore. It almost killed me where I stood, for a second, my heart ceased to beat.
I should have been happy about this – it was what I wanted, after all. I had been avoiding him for over three weeks, waiting for the moment, when he would stop calling and stop trying to see me.
But it still… hurt.
Goddamn it.
Giving Maddox Coulter my heart had been a mistake. But this time… I had been the one to walk away from him.
“I forgot, when are your exams?” Riley settled beside me on the couch, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. I sunk into her embrace and curled my feet under me.
“I have two back to back in two days, and another, the day after next.”
We were now exactly twenty days from Christmas. My life fell apart at a shitty time. Exams period were upon us, and life got even crazier. I could barely study, barely focus on my revisions for my exams. My mind was a mess, and my heart just wasn’t in it. I constantly worried about Maddox. He was never