"If I was given the chance to go back in time just to meet you all over again, I'm not quite sure if I would. Even at the chance that you would stay. I don't know if I could risk losing you all over again. I barely survived this one."
- Connotativewords | jl | Limits

**

The afternoon light streams in as I lean over my work table, furiously sketching a dress I have been working on relentlessly for hours. Every time I have an idea, a brilliant idea, it flies away before I can grasp onto it and immortalise it on paper.

The days after the funeral are...stagnant. The days turn into weeks and Luke is silent but he is present, thankfully. He holds me close whenever he is around and disappears for a couple of hours a day, I don't question him because then I feel as though I'm smothering him with my affection.

This morning he murmured something about a jog around the city while he changed into sweat pants and put his ear buds in, walking out of the house after giving me a soft kiss on the lips.

It felt weird, having someone living with me around the clock for the first time in years but it also had a familiarity to it that I couldn't put my finger on. I would find myself getting bored if I'm alone without him for a few hours.

Lilian, my boss, has been quite understanding too, giving me permission to work on my designs from home and free rein to use the office whenever I wanted to. The band's management thankfully decided to finally give them a break, the rest of the tour being pushed back to the end of the year.

No one was mentally capable or ready to perform for thousands of people after Luke finally gathered the courage and sat down to talk to the other three members of his band; his brothers, about everything that he had kept from them all this time.

I colour in different shades of the dress, blotting them out with my fingers as I go. Lilian had told me to figure out who I wanted to invite to the opening of my label and she hadn't hesitated to boast about how any designer is at my disposal if I wanted them to be because no one would refuse an invite from Lilian Bradford. It was extremely overwhelming and even more frustrating to be reminded of every time I messed up.

An exasperated groan emits from my mouth and I blink away frustrated tears when I'm not satisfied with the design in front of me. It was not supposed to be this hard...I was born for this, wasn't I?

The front door opens and Luke walks in, a paper bag in his hand. His eyebrows furrow with concern when he sees the expression on my face. "What's wrong?" He walks towards me and takes my hands, lifting me up from my chair and pulling me to his chest.

"I can't... get them right, it's just not right." I huff, looking down at my drawings with despair as he rubs circles into my back.

"You've been working for hours. Have you eaten anything?" Luke looks down at me with a raised eyebrow and I bite down on my lip, shaking my head no.

He reaches behind him and hands me the brown paper bag. "Bagels." He smiles and my mood brightens a little when I smell the warm bread.

"You're a blessing." I groan and bite down on one, closing my eyes.

Luke watches me for a second and then pushes away from where he is leaning against my desk. "Eat up and change your clothes," he points at my pyjamas. "—we're going somewhere."

"Where?" I mumble with a mouth full of bagel, raising a questioning eyebrow at him. I had to get these designs done by next week or I could kiss my label goodbye. It was 'round the clock work for me.

I cringe at my own thoughts, chastising myself for being so hard on myself. "I'll tell you on the way." He kisses me on the forehead and disappears into the bedroom, checking his phone.

Luke was awfully calm now too. He doesn't seem to get angry anymore and he thinks a lot in silence as if he is re-evaluating his life, taking a moment to think through everything that has happened in the past few years. I just pray that it is clearing his head and not harming him.

I finish the bagel and take a final look at my mess of a desk and the fabric all over the floor around it. With another exasperated huff, I turn around and walk away, determined to spend the rest of the day with Luke.

---

When I walk out of my closet dressed for the night, Luke is standing in the middle of the room with the stack of Heath's letters in one hand and a tiny box in his other. I stop in my tracks, my heart clenching. 

"Luke?"

"You're going to read these letters. You have to. You need the closure." He simply says.

I shake my head in refusal. "No. I'm not."

"I have been watching you, Sierra, it's why you can't focus your mind. It's why you can't find your creativity. You need to read these." he takes my hands and places the stack in my palm. I know he's right. I often stay up at night, staring at the drawers where I hid them when we came back from Ana's funeral, determined to put it behind me but failing shamefully.

"Do this for me, I want you to, please." His voice cracks at the last word and I sigh. 

"Okay." His hair has gotten longer and falls over his forehead now so I mindlessly reach up with my free hand and push the blonde curls away lightly. Refusing Luke these days was a physical and mental incapability for me. Our little bubble has been so intimate and filled with love that I fear it would burst at a time we least expect it.

We climb into Luke's car and he drives in the direction of my office, turning into the road that leads to my secret spot up on the rock where I took him not a month ago.

He gets down and walks to the back of the car, pulling out firewood the length of his forearm from the trunk as my eyes widen. "Are we starting a fire?" I inquire.

"Yup." He simply states and I want to tell him we aren't allowed to but keep quiet. No one is going to see us back here anyway except for maybe a stoned man hiding in the darkness.

Luke lets me lead the way and we scramble up the rocks. He places the firewood on the ground and I sit down, staring at the envelopes in my hand. I pull the string and shuffle through them slowly. Bile rising in my throat when I place my finger under the lip of the first envelope labelled "Graduation Day."

---

Luke's Point of View

The night falls over us while we sit on the large boulder that is her favourite place in New York. I watch the blinking lights of the city and her face from the corner of my eye from time to time while I think about all the people I've been seeing on my jogs around the city every morning. Wondering what their stories were; if they have ever hurt more than I have, if they have lost someone they didn't want to go on without.

Sierra is quiet while she reads the letters, a steady stream of tears running down her face. It's like someone is repeatedly stabbing me in the heart, but I only hold her hand as consolation. I know she needs this, she needs his words to set her free.

She has been a rock to me in the past few weeks, supporting all my sorrow the best she can, and now, I feel it is my time to help her so our healing process can begin together. The pain of losing my daughter and Ana will never cease, but with time, with new memories, with Sierra, I will take it one day at a time and I am sure as hell going to live every single one of those days. If anything, now I know that life is in fact, fragile, and it should never be taken for granted. We don't have space to be ungrateful.

My finger is tracing along the intricate designs of the little wooden box mindlessly when Sierra's hand is pulled away from mine and it goes up to cover her mouth. She bites down on her finger making a pained, guttural sound at the back of her throat.

There is a twinge in my chest when I turn to her, remembering her expression from when she first saw my daughter's tombstone.

"What is it, Sierra?" I push her hair away from her face so I can see her. The envelopes are all torn and the letters lay on one side of her. She has read them all.

She stares at the last one in front of her, her posture rigid. "He knew what he was doing."

---

My hand shaking, I open the final letter, all his words swimming around in my head like a storm.

I read it all; all the hopes he had for me, the ways he would have celebrated with me, his words of comfort because he knew this last one would not be my saving grace. Somehow, I feel it too as I open it.

Luke is quiet next to me, gone deep into his own thoughts. I close my eyes and take a breath, unfolding the paper. I blink at the blank page, finally seeing the single line written at the very end.

"The world was too loud for me."

My hand is pulled out of Luke's as it goes to my mouth. I bite down on my hand, squeezing my eyes shut until I see stars.

"What is it, Sierra?" Luke's hands move the hair away from my face.

"He knew what he was doing." I croak out. Heath took his own life.

The world was too loud for me.

The hand holding the letter up falls onto my lap and my head turns up to the sky. The moon's eerie light glowing amongst the hundreds of bright lights of New York City.

"He killed himself," I say softly, forcing my brain to process it, to accept what deep down I had always known. Luke pulls me against his chest, the back of my head falling onto his shoulder.

Even though no one expected an outcome like this from Heath, this was it. I am not surprised but reading his words have sent electrical bolts jamming into my heart. Why didn't I see it? Why didn't I feel it in every kiss and touch and the way he distanced himself from me? I knew but I didn't know, not entirely. 

"He is at peace now," Luke whispers against my cheek, wiping under my eyes with his thumb.

"I wish I could have helped him." I hear the sadness in my own voice.

"You couldn't have, baby. You know that more than anyone else in the world does. The saddest ones leave the least clues."

"Yeah, I know," I claim, finally looking away from the moon and down at the letters around me.

"You can keep these if you want to, but I bought the firewood so that..."

I lean forward and away from his chest, clearing my throat and wiping at my cheeks with the neckline of my t-shirt. "Yeah, light them up," I tell him and he hesitates for a second. 

"Are you sure?"

"He was the epitome of perfect, Luke. No one is ever that perfect without a secret. I spent years after he was gone, trying to convince myself that I could have stopped what happened and I was this close," I bring my thumb and forefinger together "—this close to taking my own life because I couldn't forgive myself. Now for as long as I live, I will wish I could have saved him from himself, but so will you with the ones you lost. We will live with it though, right? We have to, for them." I look up at him and after a beat, he takes my face in between his hands, kissing me.

"Maybe it won't haunt us one day," I whisper into his lips when he pulls away an inch.

"You, me, and the devil make three." He promises as a reply and that one line strengthens my will a little.

I collect the letters from the ground while he lights a match and drops it on the firewood. It lights up immediately, crackling in the wind. I read the last letter once more.

"The world was too loud for me."

"I am so sorry," I whisper as I drop the letters into the fire, feeling like an animal gnawing off a limb to escape a trap. The flames spike and the letters catch fire.

Luke opens the little wooden box in his hands and takes out a little pink knitted baby cap with "Sierra" stitched across it in white.

He stares at it for a few seconds longer and then drops it in the fire. The letters have already burned into ashes halfway and he pulls me to his side as we watch the remnants of the people we loved, turn into embers and float up to the night sky.

---

Living in New York, there is a tattoo shop at most corners of the city and that is where Luke drags me next. He fist bumps the artist and introduces me as well and I furrow my eyebrows in confusion.

The man disappears into a room inside and Luke turns to me. "I'm getting a tattoo." He shrugs simply, seeing the question on my face.

"Another one?" I ask, looking away quickly from a mirror nearby when I catch a glimpse of my pale face and wind-blown hair under the fluorescent lights of the parlour.

"A modification to the one I have." Luke murmurs and pulls me into the circle of his arms, resting his head on top of mine.

"You, me, and the devil make three." He had said to me earlier. The song blasting through the speakers of the shop changes and a new song by the singer Halsey starts to play. I burrow my face into Luke's coat as he croons along to it.

"You think my bruised knees are sorta pretty, and I think your tired eyes are kinda nice. When I first met you there was a garden, growing from the black hole of my mind."

I lift my head because my mind fills with a sudden wave of recklessness. "Can I have a piece of paper please?" I ask a young girl who is sat at the reception with tattoos snaking up her arms.

"Sure." She pops her bubble gum and hands me a paper and pen with a grimace.

Luke watches me as I hand it to him. "Write down what you said to me before." I urge him.

"What I said?" He squints his eyes at me in confusion.

"You, me, and the devil make three," I repeat to him and he places the paper on a surface hesitantly, scribbling it down for me.

Surprisingly, his handwriting isn't as horrible as I thought it would be so I take the paper from him, satisfied.

"You're going to get that tattooed. Aren't you?" The corners of his mouth lift a little as understanding dawns on him. 

"Yup," I confirm and he shakes his head.

"You'll regret it."

I stare at his lips as they form those words and the light reflecting off his lip ring and I'm taken back to the very first time I met him. "I regret nothing," I whisper.

---

The tattoo shop agrees to do our tattoos at the same time. Luke lays on the leather seat, shirtless with his back exposed, and I sit next to him with my hand resting on a table.

I decided to get my tattoo on the inside of my ring finger when I never thought I would get one but here I am. Luke hasn't told me what he is getting yet but he holds my free hand across the gap between us. My stomach turns as the girl tells me to take steady breaths and do keep my mind calm so that I don't freak out and move my hand while she's at it.

As the machine starts I turn my head away and stare right at Luke, the needle punctures my skin, pushing ink in. I bite down on my lip and tears spring into my eyes, Luke squeezes my hand, his eyes conveying all the love he feels for me.

I start to feel woozy by the time the sound of the machine stops and the girl who I have come to know as Claire, tells me she's done. She dabs at my finger with a liquid and I lift my hand closer to my face to see Luke's scrawl etched into my skin in black ink forever.

"I love it." I grin as the other tattoo gun silences as well. Luke groans a little but there is a smile on his face when I turn in my chair to show him.

"It's beautiful." He examines it and kisses my hand, laying his head back down. Claire wraps a see through plaster around my finger to help it heal so that it doesn't irritate.

I'm staring down at my tattoo, examining each and every curve of the words of his promise to me when the artist tells us he's done with Luke's tattoo, the machine put away.

Luke blinks open his eyes, his forehead creased with the pain. I stand up and walk closer, looking down at his reddened back. The tattooist smiles at me and points at the little bird with the words along its tiny spine and then the bark of the tree.

The word "Home." is added to the other two words that were previously there. Carry You Home. It says and the trunk of the tree now bends at an angle, forming a slight "S" that you need to look close to see. The bark of the tree that once gave an illusion of crumbling, is now darkened in a bit more to show that it has become stronger.

Luke straightens slowly, sitting up to face me. The chain I gave him is around his neck and it rests in the hollow between his lungs.

He pulls me closer to him, bringing my forehead down to rest on his. "You like?" He asks with a smile, his breath mixing with mine.

"It's beautiful."

A/N:

You guys!! Never Enough is in the running to win Story Of The Year!

If you want to vote for me you can go to this link to vote: http://w.tt/StoryOfTheYear
You only get one vote so be careful! I see all your tweets when you vote so I'll be sure to follow you back on Twitter as a thank you.

I hope you vote for never enough! Thank you so much and I love you all x

- Rythma.