Chapter 37: Opened Wound

Melissa's POV.

I was waiting for him to explain to me, but he was not speaking anymore; he just looked away from me as if everything he said was normal and I was supposed to take it as such.

"Landon, don't you have anything else to say to me? I mean, I need to understand why Lex would be angry if we are dating. Does it mean that I am so blacklisted that I can't be close to anyone around him? Am I at risk by being friends with you now?"

He looked up at me again for a few seconds without saying a word, and then, just as I was about to question him, he said,

"Tell me, Lisa, what would you do if I said you were at risk of Lex's torture now that we are being friends?" He asked me a question I never expected as I stared at him blankly.

I tried to speak, but I stuttered at the beginning: "Well, I do not know exactly what I'll do, but I know that I would do anything. They'll make me retain my scholarship and not jeopardise this chance I have to get a good future for myself. If he wants me to stay very far away from him and everyone that he cares about, I would definitely do that. I don't want him sabotaging my chances."

My voice was calm and polite as I was trying to make the best use of every word.

"You mean to tell me that you are going to give up on our friendship because Lex does not want you to be friends with me? How about me? "What about the things that I want, and am I not supposed to make my own choices in friends?" he asked me.

"Well, that's a valid question, Landon, but you and Lex have been friends for such a long time, and permit me if I assume that you would support Lex in whatever it is he decides to do to me," I replied.

"Why? Because I've always done that? I mean, I came to you because I wasn't in support of what Lex was doing to you, and I tried to help you. Why all of a sudden decide to move with Lex when he's trying to destroy a friendship that I now appreciate?"

I struggled responding to those ways; I found myself smiling sheepishly. It was something about the friendship, which he now appreciates, that made me smile, and the words of Susan began playing in my head as she tried to convince me that London may just want to be friends.

"I kept assuming us to be friends while making all those statements. I never knew that we are now actually friends. Are we?" I asked him in a calm voice.

"I don't always make the first move, especially with ladies. I do not think that it is worth my time trying to convince anyone to be close to me. I never even did it with Lex when we were children; he approached me first. But you, I realised that there's something very much different about you, and I wanted to be friends immediately, but the big problem was that you already made my best friend an archenemy, and I needed to step in as a mediator."

"That was quite intelligent, Landon, and I truly do appreciate your presence because you've saved me twice today. I can't stop imagining what Selena would have done to my face if you were not up there right on time to stop it."

"It's what we do for our friends," he said to me, making me smile even more broadly this time.

I was about to walk away again when I suddenly stopped. There was something in my mind that I wanted to say, but I wasn't sure about how he was going to take it, but I was going to say it anyway.

"Landon, there's also something else I would like to ask of you."

With the way he was staring at me, I was too doubtful of if I should say it or not because I had just watched him fight so much with Lex, and it was going to be crazy to ask him to reconcile it.

"Seeing you and Lex fight that way, I felt guilty that it might have to be something about me, and that is why I am pleading with you to promise that you both are going to fix your differences and be friends like before while I mind my business and not interfere."

"No one ever said you were interfering, Lisa; it is just a problem that we have between each other, and now I think I am ready to let things go so you do not have to bother about that. He spoke to me about that someone I liked so much but could not have, and that was why I did this thing about his mother."

"This someone he spoke to you about was a she?"

I knew within myself that I was prying at this point, but curiosity had always, always gotten the better of me, and I found myself asking deeper questions when I could just walk away.

"Yeah, she used to be my mate. I mean, I was so committed to her, but then she died in an accident, and I still find it difficult to forget those moments we spent together. An argument with Lex yesterday, and he clearly reminded me about it, and that was why I had to open the same wound on him, knowing that it's almost the same story about him and his mother."

"So now you both are even?"

"That is if he thinks so. I did not know how to begin explaining things to him nownow, and something tells me that our friendship is about to end."

He was genuinely worried; he tried to hide it, but I could see the way he was intentionally trying to sound more casual than seriously emotional.

"What if I help you with that? I mean, it's partly my fault now too. What if I help you become friends with Lex again?"