in which the girl he thought he loved returns and she's ready to try one more time.
ONE MORE
MINIMINTER
SIDEMEN
DEATHLIES 2016
*please read book one first
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SEVEN
The Autumn weather was cold on her exposed body as she ran out the door after him, her heels tapping. It may have been cold, but him walking away from her turns her heart to ice. He was already half way down the street before she'd started after him.
"Simon!" She calls, her voice straining to call out to him through the thickness of night.
His body tenses, but he carries on walking. In return, Dallas speeds up with her hair bouncing at her shoulders and her breathing uneven as she approaches him. Although he was walking away from her, he was making no attempt to quicken his pace.
"Simon," She says, softer this time. Now she was close enough to reach out to him and curl her fingers around his wrist. "Please don't walk away from me."
Now he stops. He turns to face her with an expression that betrayed him: he looks shattered and Dallas' ice heart shatters with him.
"You mean like you did to me?" He asks, eyes burning into her with the exact same electricity that used to make her toes curl without her even knowing it. Their eyes meet and she doesn't know where her words have gone. All the things she planned to say to him before she'd come to The Shard evaporated from her tongue and drifted into the night, forgotten.
"I didn't have a choice," Dallas tells him, sinking into herself as if she were no more than a mouse and not the girl she'd built herself up to be over the years. He saw through it all.
"There's always a choice." He wasn't going to put up with her excuses, he wanted the truth and nothing but the truth. "Tell me why you left without saying goodbye."
"Did you read my letter?"
"Yes."
"Then you know why. I couldn't face you, Simon. If I could have made myself do it, I would've," She explained, her chest aching with every word and feeling as if she were about to collapse from heart ache. "But I couldn't do it and I hate that I couldn't."
The streetlamp above them flickered and through its dim light she could see a shift in his expression. He softened, but barely. "There's nothing more to say, Dallas."
"There's infinite things left to say, Simon, don't say that." Despite her pride, she found herself begging. She didn't expect him to forgive her, she just wanted him to hear her out.
And then, through all the pain, came a explosion of words hat had been brewing for years only to come out in the dim-lit street in the midst of a tragic reunion. "I was in love with you, Dallas!" Simon shouts, pushing a hand through his hair as soon as the words left him and turning away, swallowing them back down as if they'd never left him.
"Although my seventeen year old self didn't know it, I was in love with you too." She said it so gently that Simon could have curled her into his arms if he'd had no self-restraint. "I regret not admitting it to myself until recently."
"I was in love with you for years," He says into the night, but she hears him loud and clear. Dallas reaches out for him, her hand curling around his, but he shakes her off and folds his arms across his chest. "But as much as I care about you, you can't just waltz back into my life and expect me to fall right back in love with you," He says, turning back around to look her in the eye once more and the intensity and power in his eyes would've sent her falling backwards if she weren't expecting those words.
"I know, but I want to be in your life, even if it's just as a friend," She responds, desperation in her eyes. And that desperation came from not wanting to be alone anymore, or lose the people she cared about with every ounce of herself again. Being alone is a tragic road, but one that can be repaired. "I want to be your friend, Simon."
He sighs and rubs a hand over his jaw, the ring on his finger glinting in the light. "I guess there's no harm in trying." And the grin that leapt onto her face was a picture and a look he didn't like to admit to missing. She was as beautiful as the day they'd met. Years on, her eyes were still the same bright emotion and telling of her every emotion.
Without thought, she wraps her arms around him and holds him for the first time in years, not giving him a choice. "I missed you," She whispers into his chest, her breath warm.
Relaxing, he folds his arms around her too and leans his head on top of hers. It was as if, in that moment, they had been transported back into the past to their seventeen year old selves and it was sweet.
