Still in Love With You.

Chapter One - Bad News.

Highlands, Scotland...
Gabriel Sommers...

Every damn instinct in my body locked up as I fought the urge to react. I couldn't react. I wouldn't react – not in front of my sister and not in-front of Caleb. No good would come from showing my hand in front of these people that I called my friends and family. I didn't want them to know my deepest, darkest, shameful secret.

Did I believe that I had them fooled? No, not even a little bit but without voicing it, I could happily reside in ignorance where nothing hurt and I didn't have to deal with the pitying looks. Fuck, I hated those looks.

No, things were better this way. I didn't have to talk about it. About her. I could just bask in the silly reality that I had made up in my head. I could both love and hate her in that reality. I was free of the chains she had left me locked in. I was free to be who I wanted to be, but there is a part of me that simply doesn't want to be free. I want to be chained to her. I want to be tethered to her in every way that is possible. And then reality set in and I am back to the hapless idiot living in a reality where she chose a life away from me, I wasn't good enough.

I simply wasn't enough.

And I hate her all over again. I swear to God, it is exhausting when I have to deal with this back and forth inside my own head. It's a tug on my very soul. A gut-wrenching battle of emotion that laid waste to everything around me. It destroyed every single fibre of my being and who I was as a man.

I wanted to scream.

I wanted to scream to the Heavens to keep her away. My carefully carved life was fragile when it came to her. Everything that I worked so damn fucking hard for lay on a knifes edge whenever the topic of her came up because I could feel my heart surge with the love that I have always felt for her. I feel the utter hatred I feel for her walking away without so much as a glance back in my direction. I hated that she seemed to be able to do it so easily. Clearly, I never meant as much to her as she meant to me. The realisation from that fact alone was enough to leave me breathless.

"...hello, earth to Gabe?!?" My little sister, Jamie was waving her hand in front of my face trying to get my attention.

"What?"

"On the walk out of the church, I want you to walk with Roxy!"

"What? Why?" I felt my heart clench with warring emotion.

"Well, Jade is going to walk with Warren, since he is her boyfriend, which means that Roxy will need someone at her side -"

"Can't one of the other groomsmen, do it?"

"She's my maid of honour, Gabe. There is no way a simple groomsman is good enough for that title, or her!" My sister announced as if I were mentally challenged. "Pleeeeeease, big brother-"

"Fine!" Brat. She knew I could never deny her anything when she gave me those big hazel eyes.

"Thank you!" Throwing herself into my arms and I smiled despite the lead weight now residing in my stomach.

My little sister was marrying one my best friends, Caleb. Something that had taken me a while to accept. I mean, she was the same age as...my ex, yes that was the only way I could think of her now. My ex-girlfriend who somehow still held my heart in her hands, even after all these years. Anyway, Caleb was the same age as me, which meant he was five years older than my sister, in the grand scheme of things that is not a huge age gap and not what I had any real issue with. My issue had been that he was my best friend – what would happen if they broke up?