https://youtu.be/tSA7P0bco2s

NOTE: Click the Youtube link above to listen to the Audiobook version of this chapter voiced by kaelking12 (Kristen M.) featuring music by Sara Bareilles, The 1975, This Will Destroy You, and Andrew Belle.

Alex

Everything's spinning.

Tilting.

Upside down.

And I can't make it stop.

I need it to stop.

Please stop.

Ugh, my head.

My skull is melting, cracking, throbbing.

Oozing and bursting to the point where my brain is leaking through my temples.

I sit up. Dizzy, disoriented. Hoping a change in position will fix things.

But the second I do, my skull splits in two.

Pain pounds between my temples and drags me back down to the bed.

I sink into a mess of sheets and breathe in their scent.

Sandalwood and Old Spice?

It comforts me and confuses me. I try placing the smell, but the cracking in my head fractures my thoughts.

I open and close my eyes, like finding a way out of the blackness will ease the pain, but it doesn't.

Where am I, even?

Everything's dark. Silent.

I can't place myself.

I stare out at a pile of black pillows and blankets like staring will somehow make them more familiar.

But they aren't mine.

This bed isn't mine.

I wish this body wasn't mine, but it is.

My body hates me.

Every cell's in rebellion. My muscles tense, my blood races, and suddenly I become all too aware of the heat pulsing underneath my skin.

Everything's warm. Too warm. My arms, legs, and back all slow-burning under the blankets. I dig my fingers into the sheets and pull myself away from the heat radiating from the space behind me.

But it pulls me back.

It wraps its hands around my waist and holds me still. I reach down to pry its fingers away from me, but they weave their way in between mine.

The bed shifts and the weight of another body presses against me.

The throbbing in my head surges, and my brain spills a series of half-blurred images all over my conscience.

Club.

Dance floor.

Lights.

Music.

Heat.

Warmth.

His lips.

His hands.

His mouth.

My mouth.

Words.

Walls.

Windows.

Escape.

Running.

Hiding.

Here.

How did I get here?

How did we get here?

I don't know.

But now I'm stuck pinned to a mattress tattooed with traces of our mistakes. My lipstick stains on his pillows. His t-shirt tangled in the sheets.

Our body language tells half the story.

Elias's arms surround me, and I drown under the weight of their warmth. It hurts. His familiarity. The smooth curves of his surfer-lean chest, the slope of his jaw hovering inches above me, and the dangerous downward pout of his lips.

I run my tongue along the inside of my mouth and taste him everywhere, and my brain scrambles to remember what my lips already do.

Guilt and shame tighten their grip around my throat and squeeze till I choke on the aftertaste of my mistakes.

Regret wraps around me tighter than his arms can, history ties my hands and forces me to feel what I've spent a year trying not to do.

And in the space between seconds, I come apart in all the places where he's touching me. My stomach coils into knots, and tears burn in my eyes while my mind and body drift apart.

I split into two different people suspended in two different points in time.

The girl from last summer who only feels whole in the arms of the boy who broke her.

And the girl who's trying to make herself believe that she can live her life without him.

But obviously she can't.

I close my eyes, and it almost feels like nothing's changed.

Like no one ever left anyone.

Like our bodies tossed aside a year's worth of warning signs just to stop feeling lonely.

Elias leans down and nuzzles his face against the curve of my neck, and the electricity running back and forth between us spikes. Heat ricochets across my skin, and leaves tiny reminders of just how little control I have when he's this close.

God, he's so close--but I don't have it in me to push him away.

His jeans brush against my bare skin as his legs find their way on top of mine.

I run my hands along the edges of my dress and pull it back down over my thighs, like modesty still matters. But my brain blurs out the details of what we did and didn't do. And how far things between us went.

A thousand questions build in the back of my throat, but I swallow them.

I force every last one back into an angry stomach where they kick and scream in the silence.

I cling to the quiet and wait for my rehearsed numbness to settle in.

For my mind to block out the buzz running through my veins in all the places we're pressed together.

But my excuses stay silent.

And a little bit of me caves.

A little bit of my resistance dissolves into memories of him I haven't figured out how to forget. I shut my eyes and flashes of last summer play out like faded light on a movie screen.

I see him the way he was that day in Belmar. Sitting and laughing with my parents. Carrying me out of the waves. Pinning me to our picnic blanket. Kissing me like he wasn't leaving.

And I miss it.

I miss him.

I miss the potential of what we thought we would be.

But he left.

And this is who we became.

Two halves of an unsolvable equation, strung together by our mistakes.

And now Kai's caught in the middle.

I sit up, way too quickly, desperate to put as much distance between Elias and I as possible, but the rush pushes my body over the edge.

The thousand questions bubble to a boiling point and come shooting up the back of my throat. Elias stirs awake beside me, but I can't bring myself to look at him.

"You okay, Jersey?"

The concern in his voice nearly stops me dead, but I clamp my hand over my mouth and bolt off the side of his bed. I stumble over my feet in the dark and scramble to reach the bathroom door handle. Cold light pours out in front of me, and I follow the fluorescence. I collapse on the cool tile floor in front of the toilet, my stomach lurches and finally lets everything go.

I hate this.

I hate feeling like this.

I hate seeing myself like this.

I hate that he's seeing me like this.

Again.

Elias's hands fall steady on my shoulders while nausea rips through my body in slow waves. He brushes a few stray strands of hair away from my face and wipes the tears out from under my eyes like it's habit.

The soft graze of his fingers trigger a partial memory, and I slip out of the moment. I shut my eyes and see the two of us pressed together in the almost dark, his lips and hands briefly pulling me out of my sadness, out of my brokenness, and further away from everything. Further away from Kai.

My stomach tightens and the pain sends me reeling back into the present, but I'm still lost in myself. And him. I search Elias's eyes for the same resentment and regret I'm forcing myself to feel, but he only looks at me with kindness.

The softness in his eyes silences my bitterness and strips away my paper thin armor. I feel exposed, small, vulnerable. Confused and conflicted over the person I assumed he'd be versus the person he is. I stare at him, mesmerized by the fact that he doesn't seem to mind seeing me in pieces.

But he never has.

Elias saw the person I was around Rory. He saw the girl I became in the shadow of a broken relationship. But he never looked at me differently.

And that's where him and Kai are different.

Kai saved me from falling into a place I couldn't get out of when Elias left. But his way of helping came packaged in long, logical lectures and formulaic solutions. He was the person who fixed things.

The guy who had all the answers, but never was fully comfortable with accepting my problems. So he tried to make me perfect. He'd drown out the darkness in my conversations by changing the subject. He'd send me links to uplifting songs, videos, and articles rather than taking the time to realize that I needed more than digital quick-fixes.

So I stopped talking about the hard things. I edited my words and moods, so that they fit into a mold. His mold.

I let him pep-talk away my problematic loose ends, hoping that one day his approach would somehow make me picture perfect.

And I'm still hoping.

But I feel flawed in so many ways. So full of holes and hidden truths that I'm afraid he'll find. But I have to erase them.

I have to erase nights like these from my history, put the past out of my mind, and work harder to be more perfect. More present. Because that's the person Kai wants me to be, and I'd rather trade in my brokenness to be a better version of who I am, than fall back into the person I used to be.

"I need to go," I say, even though I hardly have it in me to stand.

Elias leans me against the bathroom wall and darts over to the sink without saying a word. I close my eyes and wait for my body to send me scrambling back over the toilet again, but the cool comfort of a wet towel pressed against my forehead eases the pain.

Elias lifts a cup of water to my lips with one hand, and holds the compress in place with the other. He smiles at me, but I can't make sense of his tenderness, or the fact that I feel at home on a dingy bathroom floor just because he's beside me. But I have to let that go. I have to let everything go.

"I know. I'm not stopping you, I just think you should rest for a little while before you go," he said.

I reach up and brush his hands away from my face even though I need them there. Even though I want to open my lying mouth and tell him that I have needed him since the day he left. But I drown the truth in silence instead.

I swallow the thank you's I know I should say, force myself to my feet, and let suspicion poison everything good about this moment. Because I have to. Because if I don't find it in myself to push him away, I'll stay. I'll root myself to this floor, to this room, to this moment, and fall head over heels into another disaster.

"I'm fine. I just need to get back to my room. I shouldn't even be here, and you shouldn't even be doing this," I say, my voice so much weaker than I need it to be.

"Doing what? Taking care of you? I thought you said we were friends, Jersey."

He stares at me with something between faded hope and expectation, but I stiffen up like my whole body's made of stone.

"Kai should be taking care of me, Elias. Not you. I don't need you to do this anymore."

"Then what the hell do you need me for? 'Cause you weren't begging Kai to take you home last night."

My heart bottoms out of my chest the second those words leave his mouth. I shut my eyes and try to remember the things I said, but nothing comes into focus. Maybe I don't want it to. Maybe all the holes and gaps in my memory are keeping my ugliest secrets in the dark, 'cause some secrets are better left forgotten.

"I don't remember," I say.

Elias turns towards the door and grips the frame so hard his fingers pale.

"You don't remember or you don't want to?"

"Why does that matter, Elias?! Whatever it is that we did, forget that it happened, okay?"

Elias shuts his eyes like he's scrambling to gather his thoughts before he speaks again.

"How? Tell me how I'm supposed to do that when you spent half the night acting like someone else. The someone I wrote that book for."

I tell myself to breathe, to tune out his words and ignore the sound if the truth of it means surviving the moment. But my lungs won't listen. They lock in place, threatening to suffocate the lies that are living and breathing in me.

"I was drunk! How I acted doesn't mean anything," I say.

"Bullshit, Jersey. Or is this Alex? I'm not even sure who I'm talking to anymore."

His eyes bare into me, but I stare right back, hoping he'll cave under the weight of the tension building between us before I do.

"Jersey's gone, Elias. I'm fairly sure you're well aware of what happened to her."

"Between last night and this morning? Sorry, no idea. Last time I checked, she was crawling into bed with me."

I choke back the urge to cross the room and scream at him to take back what he said, only because it all feels true. I just hope it isn't.

"I didn't--we didn't do anything, did we?" I ask, trying my best to hide my blatant mortification.

Elias glares at me, completely disgusted.

"What the fuck? Who the hell do you think I am, Jersey? You were wasted, and you know damn well that I wouldn't ever take things that far when you're like that."

"I know. I just had to--"

"You had to what? See if we had sex so you could sleep better when you go running back to Kai? For the record, we didn't. Even if we both wanted to, you should know better than anybody that I physically can't do that right now."

His face turns redder then red, and I immediately regret the words that I know I'm going to say. The words I know I shouldn't. But I open my mouth and spit them out anyway.

"Because of Dan, right?"

Elias balls his hand into a fist and sends it slamming into the door.

"No! Dan doesn't have anything to do with this, or last night, or us."

I hear what he's saying, but I can't deal with what any of it means. Not right now.

"Look, this whole conversation was a mistake. Drinking was a mistake. Going out with you was a mistake, all of this was--"

Elias crosses the room, closes the space between us, and crashes his mouth against mine. His lips are hot and hungry, angry and anguished, and I dissolve into them. He holds me like his hands could anchor my heart to the moment, and for a split second he does. For a split second, I forget about the promises we've made and broken, and let myself go. But then my brain pulls me back, and I pull away from him.

"What about this? Is this a mistake?" He asks.

I plant my hands against his chest and push him backwards, but he barely moves. He stares down at me eyes wild with desperation and confusion, so I cling to paper-thin excuses to keep myself from falling apart.

"Yes! We have other people now, Elias. I have Kai, and you--"

"I don't have anyone, Jersey! The only person standing between me and you is you. And I know that after everything that happened last night you have to have figured out that I'm obviously not g-- "

"Stop. Just stop. I don't wanna talk about this right now. I wanna go home."

I try pushing past him, but he holds me loosely by the wrists. I slide my hands out from between his gentle fingers, and I hear him struggle to breathe out his frustration the further I run.

"Please, don't do this. Please. I need to talk to you. I've needed to talk to you for longer than you understand."

Elias's voice comes out broken and exhausted, but I block out the sound. I focus my attention on the door standing between me and my escape and ignore everything else. Even the echo of his loneliness and the hollow sound of my own.

"You had a year, Elias. I sent you my journals, I called you, I texted you, I waited for you to say something, but you didn't respond to anything!"

I step forward again, but he blocks me.

"I couldn't, Jersey. I didn't have a fucking choice. That's what I've been trying to tell to you. But you won't let me explain anything to you!"

"I don't want an explanation, I want my life back. Everything was fine until you showed up here. I was fine until you showed up here. So just let me go. If you care about me at all, you'll let me go."

Elias takes me by the shoulders and looks me straight in the eye, but I avoid his gaze. I can't look at him when he's like this. I can't deal with him when he's like this. I can't deal with him at all.

"You know, I can't do that. Not until we talk about last night."

"We're not talking about anything, anymore! I'm leaving and you can't--"

Elias's phone sounds off from the bedroom and snags his attention. I take advantage of the distraction, duck under his arms, and dart for the door.

"Jersey, could you just wait a second!"

Elias whips around and trips over his clothes to follow after me, but I'm too many steps ahead. I bolt out of the bathroom, snag my shoes off the bedroom floor, and rush blindly into the hallway.

Three steps out of Elias's door, I crash head first into a body much bigger than mine. My cheek collides with the soft grey fabric of the stranger's sweater as I scramble to slow myself down. A pair of large hands land on my shoulders to steady me, and I burst out into a flurry of apologies as soon as I center myself.

"Alex?! Thank God, I've been trying to call you all morning. I didn't know if you'd gotten home safely or if something had happened."

I look up into Kai's wildly concerned eyes and guilt rattles through every bone in my body. He hardly looks like himself today. His always clean-cut hair is disheveled, his usually shaved shadow clearly visible, and his skin paler than I've ever seen it. He hasn't slept. He hasn't slept because of me.

"I'm so sorry I didn't call. My phone died, but I'm fine. I got home fine, I was just--"

"With me. She was with me."

I turn around to see Elias standing in the doorway of his room with my purse in his hands. Numbness spreads down the back of my spine and slithers around my legs until I can't feel them underneath me at all.

I look up at Kai who's eyes are wide and mortified, and scramble to find the words to explain the unexplainable. But before I'm able to open my mouth, Kai rushes towards Elias with his fist cocked back over his shoulder. I scream at him to stop, but he keeps moving forward, one determined foot after the other.

I should be sprinting after him, doing anything and everything I can to prevent Kai from making a terrible mistake, but my body refuses to move.

It roots me to the ground and forces me to watch the situation I've created.

The disaster I set in motion.

I look to Elias and wait for him to speak, move, or lift up his hands to defend himself, but they stay still at his sides. He shifts his attention away from Kai and turns it entirely towards me.

And in that sliver of a moment his eyes say everything.

Everything he can't. Everything he shouldn't. Everything I need to hear.

His mouth opens and closes, and I hear his whispered apologies echo across the silence.

And then it shatters.

The sound of skin and bone crashing against muscle ruins everything. Elias caves under the force of Kai's fist colliding with his stomach, gasps for air, and sinks towards the floor without a fight.

Without a word.

And without taking his eyes off of me once.

Not once.

(Thanks so much for reading & listening to the audiobook guys! Next update should be early next week or maybe over the weekend if I have time!)