Page 90 of All That We Are Together
I felt everything. Lust, hate, love, friendship, the sea, disappointment. I felt all the things Axel had been for me, and I saw the emotions spilling out onto a paper painted in watercolors so wet they dripped past the edges.
79
Axel
I couldn’t think. I couldn’t. I couldn’t.
Because her mouth was an addiction.
Because I was out of control.
Because I loved her so much… I moaned when Leah bit my lip, but the pain only turned me on more. I pulled up her T-shirt and inhaled a deep breath of air. She whimpered when I pressed my hips into her thighs and she felt how hard I was. I needed to breathe. I needed to be inside her. I needed to fuck her until she understood that she had to forgive me, and no one could feel for her all that I felt, all those things filling my chest and suffocating me.
But it wasn’t going to happen. Because before I could tear off her clothes, I fell still, tasting the salt of her tears on her lips along with the saliva from her kisses.
“Don’t do this. Don’t fucking cry.”
“Stop. Please, Axel. Please.”
I had never heard words that hurt so bad, but I freed her from my arms. I let her go. Leah got up sobbing and left, andI heard her slam the door to her room; it echoed through the whole apartment. My heart was pounding, and I asked myself if I would keep doing the same thing forever, not fighting, not reacting, letting the days pass between us as if this was it.
I had to go after her. No, I needed to.
80
Leah
I brought a trembling hand to my lips and touched them as if they were a stranger’s, unsure who that girl was who had been moaning beneath Axel’s body moments before, while the world drained away in the kisses and darkness.
I wanted to erase the memory. I wanted to hold on to it forever.
I wanted…to be someone else. Stronger. Firmer.
Axel was savagery, necessity, impulse. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Landon, who was tenderness, security. I couldn’t stop comparing him when I understood I would lose him. Maybe I had lost him already. And even though we’d talked before I went to Paris, I still wasn’t ready to face it. I needed a pillar. And Axel would never have his feet on the ground. He’d always be airborne: vertigo, risk.
Axel opened the door without knocking and came in.
His eyes were inflamed, his lip bleeding. I tried to tell him to leave, but my voice failed me. He huffed as he walked back and forth, one hand resting on the back of his neck. Then he stopped and stared at me a long time.
“I need us to talk, Leah.”
“Nothing’s changed.”
He crouched in front of the bed where I was sitting and closed his eyes, almost as if he were doing some kind of self-control routine, resting his head on the wooden edge of the frame. When he looked up, the grief made me want to die.
“I tried… I promise I tried. But I can’t go on like this, pretending I’m not in love with you. I am. And every morning when I pass by your room, I have to stop myself from kissing you awake, holding you all day long, and at night… You don’t want to know what I think about doing at night. I need to know what I have to do so you’ll forgive me. Just…just tell me. And I’ll do it. No matter what it is.”
I wiped away my tears.
“You say it like it was that simple. But it’s more than that, Axel. Much more. I’m talking about years of not understanding. I’m talking about everything that’s broken. Everything that could still be broken. Plus there’s another person involved.”
His jaw twitched.
“Are you in love with him?”
Yes, I wanted to shout, but I couldn’t. There had already been too many lies and empty words between us to add more. I heard that song in my head that we danced to the day I thought Axel was finally mine, when I was so naive I thought things really could be that simple. The sad notes of “The Night We Met” swirled around me while I realized that question wasn’t the right one. It didn’t matter whether or not I was in love with Landon, what mattered was why I didn’t want to be in love anymore.
“Everything with him is different.”