Destined to be?

Chapter 8

Sarah

I couldn't sleep.
Kept tossing and turning becoming so frustrated I just rolled onto my back slamming both my fists into the mattress at my sides.
Knowing exactly why I couldn't get to sleep.
The same reason as always.
You.
Your contact card was right underneath my pillow. Even though my fingertips itched to grab it and pull it out I wouldn't let myself.
I had managed to appease Brayden's worry today, working to get his mind on something else but that didn't work so well for myself when I couldn't get away from the real reason that I had been so zoned out. 
Why was it that just at the moment I felt as if I was actually going to be able to move on with my life was also the moment that you decided to come back into it.
Of course I never would be able to forget you but at least I could have been settled. Maybe I wouldn't have spent the rest of my life with Brayden but still.
That could have been an option.
No it couldn't have. Hearing that little voice in the back of my head.
The one that seemed to know exactly what it wants no matter how ridiculously impossible that was.
It was right?
Ridiculously impossible.
Biting the inside of my cheek as I rolled off the bed and went to sit at my window.
Just like I had so many times before, I glanced down the street till my eyes met the corner. Finding that circle of light that lit up the sidewalk. The one that I had been in only seconds before I was grabbed.
Stupidly thinking at one point that if i had just stayed under the light then none of this would have ever happened.
Scowling at the ignorant and foolish thought.
Sight continued down the sidewalk, the path you had told me that you took until I couldn't see anymore. The frame of my window, obstructing anymore of the view.
Of course I could open the glass up, lean my head out. Going so far until the thought of falling out would overcome me and yet still that wouldn't be far enough.
Besides, what I was looking for wasn't over there.
No.
But I had direct access sitting underneath my pillow.
I had stared at it for so long before I went to bed.
Hell, who was I kidding? I had the number memorized. I wouldn't even need the cardboard card.
It was useless now.
Just a flimsy wrinkled piece of paper.
I should get rid of it.
Destroy it so that no one else will find it. But I didn't want to. You gave that to me and I wasn't quite ready to let go of it. Your scent instilled in its fibers.
Musky woods only intensified with the saltiness of sweat.
That's why I had placed it under my pillow.
One of the main reasons I couldn't fall asleep. Even though I had your smell, my body was cold. Wanting your heat, needing to feel you pressed up against me.
Craving you in the worst possible way.
A craving I could cure so easily.
Just type in the number.
You would be over in minutes.
No!
Clenching my teeth together, grinding them slightly.
I could justify sneaking out of the house in daylight to go get frozen yogurt but i could not do the same for leaving my home in the middle of the night to go snuggle with the person who caused this problem in the first place.
No matter how much I wanted just that.
That would not be fair to anyone.
Not to my parents, not to you, not even to myself.
Just little teases of moments that I would wish to be longer, and longer until I no longer wanted to leave at all.
Then there was always the fact of how long you would let me keep on leaving.
One day deciding that you didn't want me to either.
Of course you have already made that decision and I don't think that you will make the same mistake twice.
Not like you had much choice the first time.
You had told me that you were going to keep me forever.
Yet I got out.
I left.
After staying longer than I should have.
For some reason I actually liked being around you.
The irony of how you made me feel safe even though you were the one who stole me away.
You even managed to steal me away from myself.
Guessing that you still had that piece of me.
Or maybe she had just withered away, but she was never really me.
That scared innocent girl who had one plan for her life, one goal. A girl who put more focus on school work than actually living her life. A girl who was slowly wasting away.
Then again you had an act for finding those girls didn't you.
Recalling the two previous occupants of the house.
Sadness filled me.
I had never met them and yet I felt connected to them.
After all, we had lived in the same house, with the same guy.
They both left as well.
Only each of their stories were complete opposites.
One went on to live her dream while the other went back to what she thought was hers only to end up overdosing in a pile of trash. Neither of them had even said goodbye when they left.
That's what makes mine so different.
You had tried to help both of them.
One you had succeeded and the other well, I didn't want to think of the other because it only brought back the memory of how broken you had been when you had told me the story. 
How the tears had run down your face as you blame yourself muttering that you could have done more.
No doubt in my mind that you will live with that guilt for the rest of your life.
Knowing how much you cared.
All you ever wanted was for someone to love you back.
For that person to stay.
Yet we all left you.
Just like your mother had.
The only thing was, she left you with a sick bastard.
Someone who should never have had the right to have any children in the first place and the police never did anything to save you from him.
After what he did to you I'm more impressed that you didnt turn out to be more like the monster I had imagined in my head.
Somehow you managed to get out without a heart turned to ice. Maybe that was from your mother.
How you had rushed home just to be with her, took care of her when she couldn't herself.
Thinking again. 
Remembering the bits of stories you had told me that she had told you when you were little. All about life. Warnings more than anything. Stories that made you hate the world.
Growing up with so much hate and yet you cared so much for the ones that you chose to hold close.
All you wanted was love.
You craved that just like I craved you.
Right now I was keeping both of us from what we truly wanted.