***"Oh, I can't be***
***The kiss that you don't need***
***The lie between your teeth***
***The cut that always bleeds." - Conan Gray***
***Alissa Blake***
I had a panic attack.
The moment we passed the sign saying we were leaving the city, I lost it. Cyrus kept his hands on the wheel, his fingertips white from gripping the leather too tightly. He couldn’t stop on a road like that, so he had to just sit through it, watching it all unfold while keeping his eyes on the cars and trucks around us.
I screamed, cried, pulled at my hair, scratched at my skin, unable to deal with whatever was happening inside me.
It was too much for a normal person to handle, wasn’t it? I tried to convince myself that yes, it was, just to feel a little more human.
Morgan’s face kept flashing in my mind as my last memory of my little girl. I didn’t want any of this. Getting attached to her as if she were mine made me remember things I wanted so badly to forget.
My parents, the past, being sent to that hellhole just for falling in love with Holden, and everything I lost. I lost more than Holden will ever know when I was sent to that place.
But I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell him. Maybe when he doesn’t hate me anymore, and when I no longer hold resentment over how everything spiraled so disastrously just when we found each other again.
We were apart for years, a whole decade. That’s enough time to change someone forever. The damage might be irreversible, and I kept hoping the months Holden and I spent apart weren’t like that.
Because those months felt like years to me.
I was never someone who allowed herself to be sentimental. I’m sensitive—undeniably so. But there’s always been a wall, something stopping me from accessing those feelings and being able to express them or even accept them.
When Holden found me—ran into me, actually—I thought I was going to explode.
There were so many emotions hitting me all at once that I didn’t think I could handle it. But he, with his usual persistence and charm, managed to break through. I felt weak, or maybe that was just my idea of what love meant. Because every time I gave in to that feeling, I got screwed.
And now was no different.
I thought about Holden, how when we saw each other again, I believed he hadn’t changed. He seemed the same in so many ways, and maybe I was just enchanted, but he remained almost the same. Unlike me. And he could see it—that I had come back pieced together all wrong, shattered into a thousand fragments and missing a few.
I’d become a makeshift version of myself. That’s how I managed to rebuild and survive. But maybe that’s what would have to work now too.
I had to do the same. Get over it, gather my crooked, incomplete pieces, and keep going. Because life doesn’t stop for our grief. Morgan would still be in that house, suffering God knows what, I’d have to go back to work, and now Holden would have to pick up his broken pieces too.
Life doesn’t pause for our pain—and I always thought that was unfair. But when you suffer, you learn that letting it stop your life is a choice. You keep going—even if you’re just a zombie, not feeling anything meaningful, you keep going.
Until one day, a bit of color returns and paints over that forgotten canvas left in a dark room. Layer over layer, creating something new.
Again and again, however many times it takes.
When I finally calmed down—after some screaming and losing tufts of hair—Cyrus was more relaxed. I think he just waited until I could pull myself together.
We didn’t stop until we reached the hotel, but I was grateful he at least cared enough to consider calling emergency services if things got worse.
“Cry all you need, scream as much as you want, I don’t care. Punch the damn car and break anything that’s not essential to our survival. You’re going to hurt, it’s going to suck, but it’ll pass, Alissa. It won’t last forever.” That was all he said while I hugged my knees, feet on the seat, ignoring the possibility of crashing and being thrown through the windshield like a football.
I listened to him in silence and glanced his way. It wasn’t a thank you, but it was acknowledgment. He’d been through this kind of pain, and I couldn’t even imagine. But the broken recognize each other, and Cyrus—despite being a selfish asshole who only helped when it suited him—seemed to be just trying to survive too.
So, when we got to the hotel, I tried to act normal. Pretended I hadn’t spent an hour completely falling apart and just swallowed all those emotions down.
It was a relatively small hotel for someone like Holden to be staying at. Nothing like the reports in the media—which was probably the point, to avoid the buzzards, the paparazzi.
I tried not to think about seeing him. Ignored how much I wanted to smell him again—and God, how badly I wanted to kiss him one more time. In the first few months, it felt like withdrawal. Now it felt like we had lived it all in another life.
A decade apart. Still in love, still hopelessly drawn to each other, even if I refused to admit it. Months of self-destruction, discoveries that finished wrecking me, and forced distance, once again stealing from us what could’ve been the best thing in this cruel, messed-up life.
Could months undo what a decade couldn’t?
I hoped not. I tried to believe that maybe not all was lost—because I couldn’t afford to lose any more than I already had. But when I sat down at that bar—a small, cozy place with good music in the hotel lounge—I knew everything had changed.
When I looked to the side, seeing him drowning himself in every drink available, face visibly thinner, with long disheveled hair, I had a vision I never expected.
He was my boy. The one with shining eyes, a voice I’d know anywhere, and that irritating optimism I fell for as a teenager. The one I found again a year ago and thought maybe, just maybe, we could have everything we’d once been denied.
But at the same time, he wasn’t there anymore. Not in that version of him. And when he turned, finally noticing me from across the bar, I knew for sure.
Those empty eyes revealed a broken man.
Time hadn’t been a promise this time. And that wasn’t the same person I fell in love with anymore.