it because it was just two weeks after that trip everything fell apart. Okay fell apart is a bad way of saying it. I smashed it all to pieces. I set our relationship on fire, leaving him to watch it burn alone.
There are more pictures of us in Amsterdam before the setting is back to Del Rey.
Zara’s smiling face stares back at me in one picture, wet from the pool, sitting between my legs, my hands holding her possessively. I don’t look happy in this picture. I look angry, desperate, barely holding on.
In another life, another chance, I could have kept her. I could have been happy. Zara was everything I thought I needed, someone who worshipped me. Never challenged me. Someone who held my hand through my own downfall. Letting her go was one of the few things I did right.
Then why does it still hurt so much?
Before the pictures of her there are pages and pages of blurry memories, regrets, mistakes. Drugs, parties, girls. It’s a mess.
Until it’s Preston. Pictures from the weekend he died. The catalyst.
The door of the office opens, and I look up to see Hanna tiptoeing across the office in one of my T-shirts. “What are you doing?” she whispers.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
She sits on the desk in front of me, and I immediately roll my chair putting myself between her legs. My hands run up the soft skin of her thighs as she rakes her fingers through my hair.
“Is this about last night?”
Last night. The first time I slept with Ellis in three years, the best sex I’ve had in about as long. The way he looked when he thought I had been with other men. The jealousy on his face. And yeah, I bought the lube in a moment of weakness stupidly thinking I could replace him. Thinking I could find someone in the city, accept the truth about myself and pretend it had nothing to do with him.
That bottle never even got close to being opened.
I thought he’d be happy, being together again. I thought that’s what he wanted, but he never really shook off the anger at me, and I’m starting to think his little threat the other day about never going back down that road with me was true, and that feels like knives in my chest.
I let out a deep sigh.
“I don’t know.”
She picks up my phone, seeing the picture of Preston on the screen. Then, she kisses the top of my head and sets it back down. “Do you want to talk about it?”
No, I don’t.
But not talking about it has been my MO for as long as I can remember, and look where that’s gotten me. Fuck maybe Preston’s death wasn’t the catalyst after all. Maybe I never had it together even then. Zara admitted she loved me long before the crash, but I had walls up long before she found her way back to Del Rey.
“Ellis and I did a lot more than hook up in Amsterdam,” I mutter against the skin of her knee.
“I figured that much out.”
“He was the first man…no, the only man I have ever been with. I thought it was just sex, and at first, I think it was.”
“Did you love him?”
My throat starts to ache with the emotion I’m holding back. Did I? Do I still?
“Yes,” I whisper, shutting my eyes and letting her stroke my head.
“What happened?”
My eyes squeeze closed, painful memories resurfacing. “I fucked up.”
I tell her everything. From the first time to the end, the most shame I have ever felt in my life. The point in my story where I hated myself more than ever before.
“Oh, Nash,” she whispers, placing her lips on the top of my head.
“What do I do now?” I ask, not even bothering to fight these fucking tears as they land against the skin of her legs.
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know.” Which is a lie. I know what I want. What I don’t know is if asking for what I want is worth the risk of being disappointed, rejected and left with nothing.
“I think you do know.”
She pulls my head back, peering down into my eyes. Hanna is so fearless, flawless, and with her I don’t feel afraid of what I could become. She makes it so easy to be the man I want to be.
Leaning forward, she kisses my lips.
“What if I want both of you?” I whisper, pulling her to my lap and squeezing her as tight as I can.