Broken (Brown Eyed Boy book 2)

Inner Demons (Jessie POV)

It was a week since we were at the wedding and it all still seems like a dream. Even after everything Carlos and I had been through in the past year and a half, I never thought that he would actually say he loved me. I wasn't an idiot, I knew there was a difference between loving someone and being in love with them. I'd known for a while that I was in love with Carlos but there was still that voice in the back of my mind that told me I was nothing but damaged goods and one day he would realize that. I always tried to deny that voice but if I was being honest it was just something that I feared too much. But that fear disappeared the day of the wedding, the exact moment that Carlos said he was in love with me. And ever since that moment, I can't look at him without a big smile crossing my face.

We haven't said it again to each other since that day, but I'm okay with it. We didn't need to be one of those couples that needed to announce their love for each other all the time. Whenever I saw a couple that did that, I would wonder how much they could really be in love if they needed to keep saying it. I learned a long time ago that with Carlos, words weren't always needed. We could be completely comfortable in silences together, as long as I wasn't obviously worrying about something. We didn't always need to kiss; we could just hold hands or stand next to each other and be happy. Though I'm not going to lie and say that when we did kiss it wasn't great. It's like because we don't do it all the time, when we finally do it makes it better. But then that's my own personal opinion and I can't really speak for Carlos.

If you'd seen Carlos and I in the past week, you wouldn't think that anything had changed with us. But if you really knew us, you would notice the difference. Now when I walked with him, I didn't look down at the floor pretending not to see the occasional jealous stare or girl just checking him out. Now when we walked, I walked with him confidently and glanced at those girls, making it known that I was with him and no one was going to change that. I wasn't worried about him leaving me anymore or someone stealing him from me. My focus now was that I didn't lapse back into that old version of myself.

Carlos changed a little too, but his change was more in reaction to mine. Naturally for him, he noticed my shift in confidence and gave me more room. If someone said something in passing that he thought I didn't like, he let me respond before stepping in. He even stopped checking so often to see if I was having one of my darker memory moments. He did still check, but it happened less often than he used to. It must have been a hard habit for him to break after a year and a half.

To me, Carlos was my own personal Angel. From the first moment we met in the supermarket, he took an immediate interest in me and made it a point to stick by me ever since. Even when he knew nothing about me, he came to my defense against Jared and I have always been grateful. Ever since that moment, he has truly been the best friend I could have asked for. He never doubted me, even though I always doubted myself. He saw past all my insecurities and issues to who I was as a person and made me see it too. Carlos told me the truth, whether I liked it or not, about everything. And a lot of the time he seemed to know me better than I did.

Carlos made me see that even though I had bad things happen to me, I could always go on and be this happy person he's made me. He saved me from the isolation I had dumped myself in and now because of him I've been able to conquer my inner demons. To sound cliché about it, I don't know what I would've done if Carlos hadn't come into my life.

What I did know was that now that I was happy with where I was in life, it was going to take a hell of a lot to make me break.