❝𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋❞ - 𝐚𝐱𝐞𝐥 𝐤𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐜

BONUS CHAPTER

hey lovess. so i was rereading my own work (as one does) and i saw all the comments on chapter eleven after i robbed you all of a kissing scene between Maddie and Axel. so guess what, as a late anniversary present to this book to show my appreciation for you all, here is the moment and you all can stop accusing me of robbery :)

-🥋-

AXEL

I didn't understand how some people could wake up happy and go through their day without their chest beginning to coil. There were people in the world that looked forward to their day? There were people that woke up and didn't wish for it to be over. They didn't count the hours, the minutes, until they could find peace in the form of sleep. The silence in the darkness was a drug I longed for every single day in a world where my thoughts were too loud and I just needed them to end. 

Up until today, I believed that the only place I would find that silence was in my bedroom when everybody was asleep and the entire house felt empty. When I was behind walls so thick, I couldn't hear the breathing of my family in the next bedroom, or the sounds of crickets outside my window. In return, those walls were so thick that nobody could hear me begging for it all to end. For the silence just to last forever. The tears that bled out my pain and the whispers hoping, praying, that I wouldn't have to repeat the cycle. 

I hadn't slept behind my bedroom walls in nights, where the silence constantly lingered, but even miles and miles away, I still found peace in it. My thoughts were still circling when I competed on the mats, or when I trained with my sensei, but the longer I spent in Barcelona, I felt them begin to fade. And for the first time in a long time, I could hear my own breathing. Gentle beats of wind that rattled through my chest steadily. Even now, on a beach where the waves bashed down on the sand and echoed through the city, the world seemed to be silent. The exact silent I longed for. 

I could never understand how some people could go to sleep excited and longing to wake up the next day, until I found myself lying in bed the first night after arriving in Barcelona. After I'd found sanctuary in the depths of a pair of the most memorable brown eyes. That first look... the world stopped spinning so quickly and the world seemed to turn it's volume down. I wanted to wake up the next morning just so I could see those eyes again, and the girl they belonged to. 

When I was with her, I could feel the world around me. And I mean... feel. The sand beneath my feet, the chill in the air, and the heat burning through my fingertips as she raised it to her lips. Maddie Stone placed her delicate lips onto my fingers, holding my fist tightly in hers. It had hit close to my chest when she told me that she thought I'd make a good boyfriend, because I'd never considered the thought of anyone loving me enough to want me in that way. I was an emotional trainwreck, sure, and I didn't have anything to give her. All I had was karate. It took up so much of my time, I didn't have anything else to give to the universe, or anything else to give Maddie. 

But I was willing to try if it meant that I could be hers. 

I'd never understood the expression of heat rushing through your body when you kissed someone for the first time. Because that didn't happen for me. Instead, it felt like every dead organ inside me, and my broken soul, began to regrow itself. Shedding away the person I was, and building the person I wanted to be for her. Like a dying and wilted tree, when Maddie kissed me, it felt like flowers bloomed all over me and life seemed to blossom. I could feel my soul lighting back up after being dimmed for so long.