Chapter 24 #3
Those memories felt like a lifetime ago now.
So much had changed since I’d left Starlight Cove behind.
I’d changed. The hopeful, naive girl I’d been back then was long gone, replaced by someone more guarded, more cynical.
Someone who’d learned the hard way that dreams didn’t always come true. And people didn’t always stay.
Still, Chase’s admission tugged at something inside me. Made me wonder if there was more to the story than I realized. More to the breakup than what met the eye.
I’d spent the past decade thinking that Levi had broken things off without a backward glance. That I meant nothing to him. His harsh words—words I’d spent years trying to forget—and the cold, detached way he’d said them flooded my mind.
I don’t love you. I never really did. I was only interested in a good time, and I’m bored now. This was just a summer fling anyway. It never meant anything.
I swallowed down the hurt that always crept in when my memories overwhelmed me. But for the first time, I tried to look at what had happened objectively. See if I’d missed anything when I’d been blinded by my hurt.
I could still see him standing there, shoulders hunched, head down.
His hands had been shoved into his pockets as the sunset illuminated him from behind.
He hadn’t even looked me in the eye. Not once.
At the time, I’d thought he couldn’t stand the sight of me, but now I wondered if maybe he just simply couldn’t.
Because if he did, maybe he wouldn’t have been able to go through with it at all…
If even an ounce of what Chase said was true, this changed things.
This changed everything.
And though I wanted to cling to the anger and betrayal I’d been carrying since Levi had ended things, I had to admit, at least to myself, that it might be more complicated than that.
My feelings certainly were.
When he’d broken up with me, he’d taken a piece of my heart, leaving a gaping wound behind.
That ever-present hurt was a constant ache that simmered under the surface, flaring up whenever he was around.
Manifesting itself into pure anger. I wanted to cling to that like a security blanket, using it to keep him at a distance.
Using it to protect myself because I’d been through too much…
hurt by every single person who’d supposedly loved me.
But as much as I wanted to hate Levi, and as much as it would make things easier if I did, I didn’t. Not really. I hated what he’d done to me. To us.
I could admit that, more than anything, I was hurt by him. Confused and blindsided and now, years later, still a little heartbroken, if I was being completely honest. But I didn’t hate him.
This whole situation would’ve been a hell of a lot easier if I did.
Still, I couldn’t reconcile the details Chase had given me with what had actually happened. None of it made sense. Not why Levi would do it or why he’d stayed away.
True, the night before he’d broken things off, we’d been caught having sex in the back seat of my dad’s car. But his parents hadn’t been the ones to freak out—he’d been eighteen at the time anyway. But mine? Mine had lost their shit and spouted all kinds of threats.
Before we’d even left the police station, they’d yelled and screamed about how I was ruining my life with a boy like Levi.
Someone who wouldn’t amount to anything more than a worthless drunk like his father.
How I was tarnishing their name and my dad’s future in politics.
How they’d cut me off if I didn’t end things immediately.
That didn’t exactly work out as they’d hoped, though the end result was the same.
I was no longer with Levi, thanks to his doing, but it had also been the night I’d decided to stop playing my parents’ game.
I was no longer allowing their rules to restrict me.
I was ready to forge my own path. Move forward with my life how I saw fit, rather than forcing myself into the framework they’d crafted for me or following the plans they’d made for me.
And when I’d told them as much, they’d been the ones to give the ultimatum. Them and the life they’d created for me—or nothing.
So, I’d chosen nothing.
In reality, it had been everything. Just not them.
I didn’t know what had truly happened the night Levi broke things off. I didn’t know if he was just giving lip service, and if he had been, why? And why couldn’t he tell me what had actually happened? Why couldn’t he have reached out at some point over the past decade-plus and made things right?
But I did know one thing—Levi and I needed to talk. I could finally admit these feelings I had toward him weren’t hate. I was angry, without a doubt. Pissed at everything that had happened. But I still felt lingering affection, tied up with hurt and heartbreak.
And the only reason that remained was because the connection between us was still going strong, the string tying us together thin and frayed but attached. Something neither time nor distance had been able to sever.