Not a Reunion

Chapter 35

Thea

The last few months of my life have been nothing but busy. I spent all my days looking after my siblings while carving out time for work. It was hard to manage, but I got it down after a full week. It was hard to get them to quiet down so I could take a meeting, and after a few trials and errors, the only thing that would work was me putting on a show. Or be letting them play in your backyard as I went up to my room to do the meeting. My window would be open, and so I would listen to their laughter and silly fights. I wouldn't let them play all on their own.

When my mom's boyfriend showed up, I had gotten extra help. He was a divorced man who was just searching for the next love in his life. He happened to find my mother. I knew that they were a good fit because he had taken care of my mom's kids while she was in rehabilitation. That showed me exactly how much he cared and would wait patiently for my mom. After she came back and proposed to him, they got married.

Now I have a stepdad and two other siblings. They were all younger than me, just barely in high school, but it was nice to get to know them.

But that wasn't the only major change in my life. I have gained a lot of new family members, but I have also lost someone.

I lost Liam.

After the realization that he couldn't say how much he loved me without feeling it in his heart, I knew I would have to let him. If I kept him after he didn't love me the way I loved him, my heart would grow. It would only decay until I loved him the way he loved me. I would shape my heart around the way his had been shaped in the last few months, but that wasn't what I wanted.

It hurt to not hear him mean the words he said to me. It gutted me to hear myself speak to him with love and genuineness when he couldn't even greet me at the door. It hurt me to hear myself say I loved him, that I wanted him, and for him to not reciprocate it.

I didn't want a love where we ignored each other and didn't seek comfort together. I didn't want someone who slept by me in bed every night but did not whisper that he loved me as I fell asleep for the night. I didn't want someone who would still flash me a smile despite being tired in the morning.

I wanted more.

I didn't want my heart to be shaped in such a way that it wasn't beating profusely for the man I loved.

"Why aren't you wearing your engagement ring?" Mason asks, his eyes still straying from my finger. The time I spent with Mason at my home a few months ago was spent with him staring at my engagement ring. Every few hours, his eyes would stray to it, sometimes even speaking to me while he was looking at it.

He had always looked at my ring, so I knew he would spot that I wasn't wearing one anymore. I knew he would question what had happened to it. I knew he would take me back to the time when I had broken it off with my fiance.

"Look at me," I say later that night when we head into the living room. Liam had been barely able to look at me after I told him how he couldn't say I love you to me. He had been avoiding me in a way he hadn't before. This time, it seemed that he had been caught.

His eyes met mine finally after Ahvjnf spent an hour here. I feel my heart hurting as I ask, Be honest with me: do you love me?"

"Of course I do," he says quickly. He said it quickly, but there was still a flaw in it. I could see on his face that he didn't mean it wholeheartedly. I needed for him to mean it with his heart. I couldn't marry a guy who couldn't say I loved you without feeling it with everything he had.

"Not in the way I want you to," I say as my fingers go back to my ring. I take a shaky breath and say, "You're not in love with me anymore, are you, Liam?"