Page 110 of Heartache & Playdates
The classroom was empty when I walked in, but I saw that the door to the supply closet in the back of the room was open and the melodic sounds of her tone-deaf stylings were coming from there.
“Hey,” I said quietly as I lightly knocked on the doorframe.
“Ahh!” she yelped as she jumped in the air.
“Whoa.” I ducked as a roll of paper towels came flying at my head. I chuckled as I bent down and picked up the Bounty roll.
She swatted my arm as I handed the quicker cleaner upper back to her. “You scared me!”
“Sorry. Bianca let me in. She said that she locked up the front and it’s just the two of us in the building.”
Peyton’s breath hitched. I wasn’t sure if it was because we were alone, or if it was the aftermath of the adrenaline from the scare.
“Oh, okay. Hi.”
“You look…really pretty.” I wanted to tell her that she looked so hot I wanted to rip that silky shirt off of her, but that wouldn’t be the best way to start this talk.
A blush crawled up her cheeks as she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Thanks.”
“Look, I know things have been…a little off between us the past couple of weeks.”
She nodded in agreement.
“I think you know this, but I’m going to tell you anyway, I love you, Peyton. I always have and I always will. Nothing will ever change that. For a long time, I thought that love had to look a certain way. But tonight, I realized something. My love for you is more than just romantic, it’s deeper than that. It’s bigger than that. You are a part of me. I need you like I need air to breathe or water to live.
“The years that we were apart, something was missing. It felt like I had a phantom limb. Or, I guess, a phantom heart. I don’t want to ever feel like that again. I want you in my life. Forever. And I don’t want any sort of romantic messiness to threaten that or make me lose you. I would rather be best friends with my soulmate than not have you at all. And you are my soulmate, Peyton.”
I took a deep breath. “And not only that, we have Lina. No, we didn’t raise her together, but she’s half you and half me. That’s a bond that will never be broken. I don’t want anything to come between that or get in the way of that. I love you, Peyton. You’re my family and you will be my family forever.”
44
PEYTON
I should behappy about what Maddox was telling me. He said that he’d rather be best friends with his soulmate then not have me at all. He’d said that I was his soulmate.
He was telling me that he wanted me in his life, forever. That he wanted to be family. That’s all I’d ever truly wanted. A real family. I should be ecstatic. But instead, all I felt was disappointment.
I stood there and tried to tell myself that it was better this way. Less complicated. What if we got together and it didn’t work out? What then? Then I could lose him.
I’d done that already. I didn’t think I could survive that again.
“Your hands are shaking,” he said, pulling me out of my inner musings.
“Are they?” I glanced down and saw that sure enough, they were trembling.
“Is it still from me scaring you?” The timbre in his voice vibrated through me.
I nodded.
“You don’t have to be scared, it’s just me.”
“I’m not scared of you. I’m scared of losing you,” I answered honestly.
He stepped forward and brushed the hair off my face, pressing his lips to my forehead as he whispered, “You won’t lose me. I’m not going anywhere. Ever.”
The promise was nice to hear. And I knew if we remained just friends, best friends, then that would be the case. The thing was, I didn’t just want to be friends. I wanted to be more than that.
An internal war was waging inside of me. One side was fighting for me to tell him that I didn’t just want to be his friend. That I loved him and wanted to be with him. But the other side was equally as aggressive with its stance that if I did that and things didn’t work out, I was opening up the door to lose him. I knew that was probably me projecting my own feelings of insecurity. I’d been in therapy for five years and I wasn’t sure I was any closer to working through my abandonment and attachment issues.
