https://youtu.be/JWZEyujS2wM

*Note: FEELS WARNING: ALEX & KAI GET INTENSELY EMOTIONAL IN THIS CHAPTER. ENJOY! Click the Youtube link above to listen to the Audiobook Version of this chapter voiced by kaelking12 (Kristen M.) featuring music by Sara Bareilles, Imogen Heap, Sia, and KHS, Max, Alyson (Zedd. Ft. Selena Gomez Cover).

Alex

I can't breathe.

I can't think.

I can't open my mouth and tell Kai that I'm suffocating.

Or that he's suffocating me.

I need space.

Air.

I need to be left alone. But he won't leave me. He'll never leave me. Instead, he'll stay and try to fix things because that's what he does.

He tries and hopes for the day when he'll be able to make me believe that our relationship is enough.

But it isn't. Maybe it never was.

Because all Elias had to do was look at me, and I drifted.

I traded security for history and went running right back into the memory of what we used to be.

And so much of me wanted to stay.

I wanted to fall back into us.

But, I slipped instead.

And now, I'm stuck staring at the consequences.

Kai looks at me without saying anything for a while. His eyes roam over my face like he's trying to figure out a Rubik's cube. But I stay a mystery. I avoid his gaze and focus my attention on the half-dried vomit stains on the carpet.

I've done nothing but make a mess of things this morning.

Thirty seconds after walking into my room, I threw up on myself, on Kai, on everything.

I got sick to the point where he had to carry me into the shower and hold me up because I couldn't even stand on my own.

I wanted to dissolve under that hot water.

I wanted to disappear down the drain and into the dark where I wouldn't have to be seen by anyone.

Especially Kai.

But he took care of me.

Even though I didn't want him to.

Even though all I did was watch him wash my mess off of me and silently wish he was someone else.

My someone else.

And this.

This is why he should leave me. Why he should walk out of this dorm and find a girl who won't do the kinds of things to him that I have.

But, he won't.

He'll stay right here, caressing the side of my face like I'm still the girl I was twenty-four hours ago. The girl who didn't lie, or cheat.

The girl who was better at pretending that her heart didn't belong to the boy standing on the other side of her door.

But the me I am in this moment can't pretend anymore.

"Alex, what's wrong? I can't help you if I don't know what's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong. I just--"

My voice catches in my throat as I choke on hollow excuses. He leans in to kiss me, but I shut my eyes and purse my lips like it's poison. His mouth is cautious and almost kind, but then I remember the way those same lips lashed out at Elias.

The image of the two of them fighting flickers across my memory, and I pull back. I pull away from him till my head thuds quietly against the front door.

"Babe, talk to me. Please. You've gotta talk to me, so I know what to do."

The construction work begins in my brain again. Jackhammers and drills chip away at my skull till the world blurs out of focus.

"You don't have to do anything. I'm fine."

"How is this fine, Alex? You can't even walk on your own!"

Quiet frustration washes over his face, but I pretend that I don't see it. That look is starting to become more and more familiar than I want it to be.

"Look, can we not do this right now? Please."

I lift my hand up and gesture for him to stop prying, to stop asking questions he doesn't want to know the answers to, but he doesn't. He keeps pushing, and if he pushes hard enough, I'll break.

"Then when do you want to talk about this? Do you know how worried I was about you last night? I had no idea where you were, or if anything had happened to you, and then you show up this morning looking like this."

"Look, I'm sorry, okay? What else do you want me to say to you? I'm tired, I drank too much, and I need Tylenol and sleep. Not an argument. This isn't as big of a deal as you're making it out to be."

Kai curls his bottom lip in towards his teeth and breathes out his frustration.

"Yes, it is, especially if you're someone who doesn't usually drink. This isn't you, Alex. You're better than this, but you and I both know who isn't."

Don't. Don't talk to me about him. Don't say his name. Don't say anything at all.

"This isn't about him."

Kai shakes his head and slips into a disappointed smiles.

"C'mon, Alex. He's the reason you're like this. I've seen what he does to you. He shows up on his own terms, gets into your head, and makes you lose control. He did it last year, and he's doing it again now."

No, he's not. He's different now. He's changed.

Or maybe some part of me wants to believe that he has.

I don't know.

I don't know who he is, or what he is anymore.

I just want to stop thinking and being told what to think.

Because too many people telling me how to feel was the reason I fell apart in the first place.

"Stop. If you care about me, you will drop this conversation. Please," I say.

I look at him with nothing but unspoken desperation spilling out of my eyes, but his eyes are too determined and distant for him to stop.

"We've been avoiding this conversation for half a year, Alex. I'm sorry, but I can't keep pretending like he's not a problem anymore. Especially when he's this close to you."

He points to the door like Elias is still standing on the other side, and the same quiet rage he slipped into earlier flashes across his eyes. I swallow the resentment rising in my throat and tense up just to keep from letting it spill over.

"I told you to let me move in, Kai. Why do you think I asked? Why do you think I wanted to get away from here?!"

I slap my hand over my mouth, but the words are already hanging in the air, poisoning everything. All the color in Kai's face fades, and he searches my eyes like he's hoping to find a different version of the truth.

But this is who I am.

Someone who hides things.

Who buries bits and pieces of the truth until they force their way to the surface.

"How long have you known he was here?" He asks, voice hollow.

My mouth starts trembling like a child's.

"Since move in day."

Kai rips his gaze away from me and stares down at his hands.

"This is what I was talking about, Alex."

"Kai, I--"

"This is what he does to you. You acted the same way last fall, remember?"

The second the word fall leaves his lips my mind darts back to a place I don't want it to go. Faded images of me sitting in my room alone for days, skipping school, and crying till I couldn't anymore, jab their way into my memory. I shut my eyes and scramble to block them out, before I fall back into being the old me. The me I desperately want to forget about.

"Why would you say that? Why would you even bring that up? I'm not even like that anymore, and you should know that."

Kai reaches out to try to calm me down, but I slap his hands away. I don't want his version of comfort right now. I just want to get out of here.

"Alex, I didn't mean it like that. I'm just saying that he's made you miserable before, and I don't want him to have that kind of effect on you again."

I back towards the door and further away from him.

"What about his effect on you? You hit him twice, and he didn't even fight back, Kai. I never thought you'd lift a hand to anybody but maybe...maybe we don't know each other as well as we think we do."

Kai recoils to the point where he shoots up to his feet just to walk away from me. He runs his hands through his mess of brown hair and sighs into the silence.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to--I shouldn't have hit him. But, I just couldn't stand and watch him try to worm his way back into your life after he destroyed it. He left you, Alex. I don't care what he's reasons were, he didn't step up when you asked him to. He didn't take care of you like he was supposed to. I did, or do you not remember that part?"

I bite down on my bottom lip to keep from boiling over, but it's too late, and I'm too tired to hold myself together any longer.

"Don't do that. Don't bring up the past like I'm not the person who lived through it. I know what he did better than anybody else."

"Then why were you with him last night? I waited for you for over an hour and a half, and you didn't even call. You didn't even text me to say that you'd changed your plans. You disappeared."

Kai's whole face falls the second he finds it in himself to look at me again, and guilt crushes every bone in my body. My heart drops into my stomach and burns in the acid. I wish I could block out his desperation, but I can't. I'm the reason it's exists in him at all.

"It was a mistake, okay? You were the one who said I should go out and experience college--"

"I didn't mean with him," he says, voice low and gravelly.

"I didn't have a choice, Kai. It was a dorm wide thing, everyone on our floor had to go."

Kai drops down on my bed, and stares at me completely defeated.

"And when were you planning on telling me he lived across the hall, hmm? Today? After I carried you into the shower, held you up so you wouldn't collapse, and washed the vomit off of you? When?"

I scramble to find the right thing to say, but my throat swells shut. Even if I had it in me to speak, there's no excuse for keeping secrets. I feel like I'm made of them now.

The last forty-eight hours have turned me into a monster. The kind of person who goes back on her word, disappears, and witholds the truth.

I could've told him about Elias the second I saw him standing in his doorway. I could've opted out of drinking. I could've called or texted Kai to let him know where I was, but I didn't. I don't know why I didn't.

But, sometimes the things you should say and do slip your mind when you're caught up in a moment. And last night I lost myself to more than I want to admit.

Some I remember.

Others I don't--and don't want to.

I still have glimpses of my mistakes. Of me making most of them, and Elias following my lead.

I remember kissing him, clinging to him, wanting Elias in ways that I shouldn't anymore. Ways that would shatter Kai completely if he knew.

If he knew I threw everything we've been through together away for a handful of selfish moments with Elias, he'd hate me.

But that's the thing about messing up in matters of the heart.

Nobody tells you how to stop wanting someone. Or how to stop loving them. Or how to pretend you're numb to them whenever they walk into the room. Because whenever I'm anywhere near Elias, I feel everything. I'm nervous, jealous, excited, terrified, and sad.

He makes me sad beyond reason because I see that he's suffering.

He's hurting out loud the way he did last summer except this time it isn't because of Lacey.

I think it's because of me.

Because I run from him when he asks me to stay.

I block my ears when he begs me to listen.

But I can't.

I'm not ready to.

Maybe I won't ever be.

Because I'm terrified of the truth.

Because the moment he explains his absence, I will have to explain my resistance. My distance. My secrets.

I'll open my mouth and spill a year's worth of nightmares I don't want to remember.

I'll have to look into the eyes of a person who feels almost like a mirror image of myself, and tear open my scars in front of him.

I'll bleed my truth all over the both of us, and he will run away from me.

Again.

But this time he'll leave because I make him. Because I'll break him worse than he ever broke me.

And, I can't do that to him.

So maybe, it's good that he's out with Indigo.

Because he deserves someone better than me.

Kai deserves someone better than me.

But he's still here, picking up my pieces, even though jaggedness is tearing through the two of us today.

"I'm sorry, Kai. I know I should've said something, and I know what I did is completely unfair to you, but I just--I don't know why I did what I did, but I'm so sorry. Please believe that I'm sorry."

Sobs rip their way through my chest, claw up my throat and explode out of my mouth, but Kai stays distant. He drops his face into his hands and waits. He waits for me to finish before he finds it in himself to speak.

"I believe you. I just wish I knew what it is that you're apologizing for."

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean, Alex."

He looks at me, eyes stormy green, and I nearly open my mouth and tell him everything. But right when the words reach my tongue, I choke. The truth congeals in my throat, and I swallow the lump it creates and scramble to tell him something else, anything else. 'Cause if he finds out everything, it'll ruin us.

"I don't remember everything that happened."

But, I remember enough.

"So, what are you saying?" He asks.

"I don't know, I just can't fully remember all of last night."

Kai bolts off the bed, stares down at me, and shame washes over every inch of my body.

"Did you sleep with him? Be honest with me."

"No!"

"Did you do anything with him?"

"I don't know."

My heart does. Otherwise, I wouldn't feel like this. Something happened between us. It was written all over Elias's face this morning. It was building between us last night. Whatever it was, he remembers. I just wish I could too--for Kai's sake.

He crosses the room, drops down beside me, and looks at me like he's full of holes. Ones I made.

"Please, just--tell me the truth. All I'll ever expect from you is the truth, Alex."

Then, you'll always be asking too much.

"I'm telling you the truth. I honestly can't remember what happened."

He takes my face in his hands and stares right through me.

"Then, maybe I'm asking you the wrong question--"

He leans in to the point where there's barely any space left between us, and my heart stands still.

"--if I asked you to tell me the name of the person your heart genuinely belongs to right at this moment, who would it be?"

For a split second, I almost tell the truth. I almost make the mistake of opening my mouth, saying the wrong name, and letting chaos crash down on the both of us.

But I hold back.

I brighten my eyes, force my lips into a smile that's supposed to say I love you, but never will, and I do the one thing he's begged me not to do.

"You."

I wait for the hard lines in his brow to smooth out, for his eyes to soften, and his cheeks to light up the way they always do when we're back to being "okay." But nothing changes.

His expression stays empty and cold when he backs away from me, picks up his backpack, and walks to the door.

I lift myself off the ground and trip over my feet trying to reach him before he disappears.

He grabs his leather jacket off the hook and slips it on, but I grab onto his sleeves to slow him down.

He turns around and looks at me--the way you look at someone who's taught you what it is to be broken.

But I don't want him to be.

I want him to stay whole. To stay hopeful. To not lose his faith in me.

So I kiss him.

I kiss him with everything I have left to give.

Everything that doesn't still belong to Elias.

But it's not enough.

He pulls away, steps into the hall, and stares at me one last time before he leaves.

"You know, sometimes I wish I could've fallen for someone else, Alex. Sometimes, I think it'd be easier if we hadn't met, because then I could focus on my work, and school, and I wouldn't be a complete mess all the time. I wouldn't be worrying about you all the time. But I can't help it. I can't help anything I say or do around you, can I? You know, I fell for you on the roof of Cella Gallery. The night I took your picture. You were this firecracker girl with this incredible spirit and no-nonsense personality, and I was floored by you. You and your wild eyes, and your messy hair, and your beat up chucks. And I remember how complete I felt when I kissed you, how I'd finally found that person I'd been missing, and that feeling hasn't stopped. Not for a moment. I just--don't know how much more I'll have to love you for it to be enough. For me to be enough. I just hope that one of these days, I will be."

***

(Thank you so much for reading guys! Hope you enjoyed this chapter! What did you guys think of the audiobook? Next update should be up on Saturday-ish. I'll be working on finishing it as soon as possible!)