Speak Now │The Begining Of The End

Part 3

Alex cried.

It was just a small sob, and her long dark hair – as gorgeous as ever – fell across her face like a curtain as her head dropped a little more.

It was enough for me to throw caution to the wind, every single little bit of it.

I closed the distance in one stride, placing one hand on her shoulder and the other on the side of her face.

If I’d felt alive before, I could have emotional immortality now. Every nerve in my body was a livewire, and the little heart-bomb in my throat exploded under the pressure. I started crying.

Alex grabbed my waist and hugged me much tighter than I’d expected. She was so strong. And I didn’t mind one bit.

I wasn’t quite sure how long we stood like that, just hugging, crying, shaking. I must have ran my fingers through her hair over a thousand times. Her face had stayed buried in my chest the whole time.

“I love you,” I choked, my breathing still not quite right. The words seemed to rip through the air, piercing the silence. They hung there, waiting for a response.

Alex shook harder in my arms. She tensed, relaxed, then tensed again, over and over. Her breath came in short gasps, like when I was 3 and my mom left me at a day care centre and I cried until I literally had no tears left.

I wiped my own tears and sat down, leaning my back against the rails of the bridge. I shifted Alex so she was in my lap – the same way I did when she would cry before all this. It would last anywhere between a few minutes and a few hours. We’d sit like this until she would talk again, and we’d suss it out. Admittedly, when I cried, she’d do the same for me.

As quickly as it had started, Alex’s’ demented bawling stopped. She nestled her face into my neck and breathed steadily.

“I love you, too.” She whispered. Even after all the crying she’d done her voice was silky – it was soft and delicate. Beautiful.

There was a long silence as she kissed me. Her lips tasted much sweeter than I remembered. And they were really warm. On that note, her whole body was warm – hot.

I forgot about everything – Ella, who I’d left screaming her head off, the fact that Alex was supposed to be dead, my practically fried career, everything.

Just Alex and me. We could have been anywhere – I didn’t care. She was alive and she still felt the same about me.

I clutched her tighter, one hand at the back of her neck and the other under her shirt on the small of her back, and climbing. Again, her skin was unusually warm.

She smiled against my lips, then broke off. She kept her eyes down, seeming to avoid looking me in the eye. She continued to smile though, like myself. “Really, Justin? You seriously want in my pants at a church?”

I blushed and took my hand from the clasp of her bra. I was glad she still had the same sense of humour I knew. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. Are you?” She took my hand.

I ignored the question. “You haven’t looked me in the eye. And you’ve got a massive temperature. What’s going on?”

Alex sighed, the way she did when she was torn, undecided or guilty. “Fine.”

“What?” I took my hand from her neck and placed it on her shoulder. “What’s fine?”

And she looked up.