The Heart Wants What It Wants: The Sequel

1

"Don't go?" 

She repeated his words as though he'd spoken to her in a foreign tongue.

"Don't go."

"I heard you, I just don't know what you're trying to say.  I mean, you were just with another girl the other day-"

"She doesn't matter," he interrupted.  "You do."

"Draco, if you're seeing someone, you shouldn't be sitting here with me asking me not to go."

"For weeks I tried to find you.  You were never at your apartment and when someone else finally answered the door, it was some woman saying she was the new tenant."

"I know," she acknowledged, as she'd all but rapidly disappeared.

"Hermione," he squeezed her hand, "I would gladly take all of the blame a thousand times over if it just meant I could have you back.  I know I have apologies to make for the way I handled things.  I didn't want you to sleep with him, not deep down.  I was immature and it was only coming from a place of pain.  I'd take it all back if I could."

Too little, too late, a voice whispered in her mind somewhere.

"We both made mistakes."

"You're forgiven," he shook his head firmly, his jaw tensing.  "I don't care about him or mistakes or the past.  I just care about you, and never letting you go again.  I'll do whatever it takes to get you back, and to keep you.  I mean it, whatever it takes."

Too little, too late.

"You want me back?" 

"I can hardly stand this table being between us, to not be able to hold you and kiss you right here and now.  Put me out of my misery one way or the other, I beg you."

A closer look at him revealed dark shadows beneath his eyes, something she hadn't noticed from a distance in the shop the other night.  There was a tiredness in his eyes that she recognised from one weary soul to another.

"If you only knew," she whispered, so quietly that he had to ask her to repeat herself, which she did, a little louder this time.

"If I only knew what?  Please, talk to me."

His other hand covered hers and his grip was tight.  His eyes seemed as desperate as his tone.

"Why were you so cold to me the other night if this is how you feel?  Why didn't you come back the next night?  Or the next night?  I thought you would come back for me."

Her voice had broken on her last few words, and even she could hear just how much it wasn't over.  No amount of determination was going to change that.  

He'd noticed, and an urgency appeared in his tone that instantly pulled her into an arena she'd sworn she wouldn't step into again.

"I'd been trying to find you, I'd had someone looking into it.  When I finally got the info on where you lived and where you were working, it was while I was out with her," he trailed off, a vein appearing in his forehead as his expression intensified.  "You looked at me like you hated me...you'd never looked at me like that before, and it killed me.  I may have appeared to come off as cold towards you, but I was falling apart inside.  I was angry at myself."

He frowned, exhaling in frustration before continuing.

"As for her, she means nothing to me.  I promise you that.  She was just someone to take my shit out on."  He shifted in his chair again, looking as though he was dangerously close to sweeping the table aside and out of his way.  "Do you honestly think I wouldn't have given in to my selfish needs eventually?  I'd have been back there soon, that I can guarantee you.  I would've come back for you."