Not Your Just Because (Stitched Hearts, #2)

Sentimental Sap

As soon as I get home from the therapist, I start on the homework Lionel gave me.

I'm surprised at how much excitement I feel at the prospect of showing Hayvin how much she actually does matter to me. I can picture the shocked expression on her face when she opens the gift I have planned for her. Not that I expect this to earn me forgiveness. That's not even why I'm doing it—not fully, anyway. Sure, her forgiveness would be nice, but Hayvin deserves the truth more than anything. I need her to see our relationship through my eyes.

Thankfully, I switched jobs a few months ago, which gave me more time at home. It also allowed me to distance myself from my friendship with David. It fucking sucked losing my best friend, but I realized that there was one thing Jerica was right about the day I told her I no longer wished to be friends—David is just as fucked up as the rest of us. I'm learning to admit that while he's still set on denying anything is wrong with him.

I thought David would put up more of a fight when I withdrew, but our drift just came naturally. It bothered me at first—how easily it was for our friendship to slide off, but the longer it's been, the more I understand this is what we need at this stage in our lives.

I hope to fuck he eventually finds the help he needs because I'd love to have my best friend back someday.

After sitting at my desk, I take a pen and notepad, then boot up my computer. I drum my fingers along the desk as I wait for the home screen to come up. Impatience thrums under my skin when it doesn't move at my desired pace.

With a sigh, I lean my chair back and fold my arms behind my head as I stare at the picture of Hayvin and me on my desk. It was a week or so before Halloween, about a year after we got together. We were standing in line for the haunted house with Everleigh and some guy she was seeing. The attraction had some characters coming out to scare the people waiting in line, so I stepped up behind her to wrap my arms around her and tucked her into my body. After those fuckers got their damn scare out of us, Hayvin was laughing with her face turned up towards mine, and I was smirking down at her. That's when Everleigh took the picture. This is my favorite, besides the one I keep of her as my phone wallpaper. I've considered many times blowing it up into a canvas and displaying it on the wall, but then that would have revealed to her what she meant to me.

So fucking stupid.

God, how the fuck did I let myself become this person?

"Finally," I mutter when my login screen comes up.

I spend the next hour reviewing anything I can find on love languages. Lionel was right. Some people are skeptical about them, and I can understand why, but I'm using them as my guide to make this right with Hayvin, anyway.

Instead of choosing one to focus on, they all play a part in my journey of redemption.

I hope.

Physical touch is coming last because I need her to know her importance to me without that.

I push away from my desk, rolling my neck along my shoulders to work out the kinks from staring at the computer screen for so long.

Grabbing my keys and locking up, I jog to my car. I'm in a hurry to get to the store to grab the supplies I need to start my first gift.

Hours later, I pour the bags out on my bed. I shake my head with a laugh when I realize I may have gone overboard.

Scissors, many types of glue, rolls, sheets of stickers, and colored and patterned paper land along the top of my mattress.

I shake my head and go to the closet to grab the box I keep hidden in there. It's one that I've only pulled out when Hayvin wasn't around. I'm starting to realize just how deeply I hid my feelings from her.

Fuck, it's no wonder she left my ass.

I hate opening the closet doors because the way the hangers dangle, lonely and desperate to be filled, only serves to remind me of the woman I've lost.

I can't stand it so much that I made a mess in it to resemble the chaos it used to be when Hayvin was here. My shoes are tossed around so much that I have to dig through the piles to find matches, ties hang haphazardly over the closet bars, and everything but my suits for work are shoved onto shelves instead of being folded neatly like they used to be.

It merely resembles my life right now.

Complete disarray without Hayvin.

I dig through the closet until I find the box I'm searching for buried under a pile of shit I don't even remember having. Usually, it's put up where it's easier to find, but I've sat in this closet and gone through it so many times since Hayvin left. I must not have returned it to its sacred spot the last time.

Anyone watching me carry this box would assume it held fragile things. It does, just not in the way they're thinking. It wasn't until Hayvin that I realized what a fucking sentimental sap I was.

Setting it on the mattress, I gently lift the lid, revealing three years of precious memories hidden inside.

All it would take is for someone to glance inside this, and they'd see the truth in my heart.

It's time to lay it out for Hayvin so she can see what I've kept hidden.