14. HeavenHell?
HEAVEN OR HELL?
AUbrEY
“Liam,” I whisper as I violently try to shake him awake.
He doesn’t move. For some reason, though he’s asleep right before me, I’ve never felt so alone.
My eyes can’t help but glance over at the bottle of pills thrown about my nightstand.
It’s been six months since he broke his leg, just months before he was supposed to sign with the Detroit Cardinals.
We are a few weeks away from the start of our junior year, and even though his leg is fully healed, he still occasionally gets into the pills.
He’s pushing himself too hard, convinced he can somehow come back from this.
He can’t. And from his ongoing bad attitude, I’m starting to think that realization is finally settling in.
Like last night, when he spent thirty minutes yelling at me because I suggested he go with Reid for a skate.
It’s not like he’s unable to skate again—the doctors never said he wouldn’t—just that he’d never skate on that level again. Never be able to play professionally.
But I know he lost a lot more than just his ability to play in the NHL—he lost his will to live, to accept any other future than the one he was so determined to have.
I blink as I stare at his form.
I don’t even know the man lying before me anymore.
The man I fell in love with used to be so funny. He was there when you needed him. A man who didn’t argue with me—didn’t say hurtful things just because he was hurting. No, he would have rather harmed himself than me.
But not anymore…
“Liam—” I choke out, hand pressed firmly on my abdomen, blood-soaked shorts plastered to my body as I stand.
“What—” he murmurs after a second, his eyelids heavy with sleep.
“Liam—I need you to—”
“Aubrey, is it that fucking important that it can’t wait until the morning?” he says, rolling in the bed, his words slurring together.
His words break that last thread holding me together. And I know I’ll never be full again. I’m nothing but broken, shattered fragments.
“Yeah—” I whisper solemnly. “Yeah, actually it can.”
I choke back my tears, swallowing them down thickly. I shove my hand over my mouth, muffling my choked sounds. I grab a pair of sweatpants, hand still over my abdomen as an ache runs through me.
What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go?
My hands violently shake at my sides as I sneak down my condo’s steps, unthinkingly, as I make my way to the living room.
I crumble to the floor, curling myself into a ball. I sit like that. Until I hear the sound of footsteps down the hall.
I find Reese’s dark gaze as she throws herself onto the floor beside me.
“Reese,” I whisper into her hair, words catching in my swollen throat, “Reese, I need you to take me to the hospital.” She says something, but I don’t hear her. Not as I say, “I think I’m losing the baby.”
She rocks me back and forth on the floor until my breathing steadies.
When I speak again, my words are few, but final. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
The memory replays in my mind over and over. Until I say the words I wanted to scream at him that very night.
“Don’t leave me alone.”
There is more I want to say—I need to say. Part of me wants to release it, free the words from my mind.
I lost our baby.
The words are right there, right at the tip of my tongue.
Just the thought of him leaving me alone again with these feelings, all resurfacing from being back in that hospital…
I can’t do it by myself.
Not again.
It’s all flooding back to me. My failure. The loss of something I never really had, but wanted all the same.
A family. A life. Him.
The small part of us that was once growing inside me, forever with me, a tidal wave of emotion and grief that I had to go through on my own.
Sure, Reese was there. And she was wonderful, but it wasn’t the same, wasn’t the one person I was desperate for.
He was.
I know Liam is worried; I can see it etched in every line of his face, in his actions, in the way he touches and comforts me. He’s scared for me. I try to ignore how my heart clenches at the thought.
I should tell him.
I need to tell him.
But I only manage. “Please,” I whisper.
I did it once without him, and tonight…tonight I can’t—
My eyes slam closed.
There is no changing the past. But the future is ours. And tonight I don’t want to think of what could’ve been. I don’t want to endure the endless thoughts spiraling inside my head.
I want silence.
I want just him and me.
I want to go back to before.
And it feels possible.
His eyes are still the same green, his hair still shimmers golden—the strands still as soft.
Sure, we aren’t who we used to be.
We don’t love each other the way we once did.
We’ve changed, grown apart.
But a part of me still recognizes him. Part of me still wants to remember what it was like before. I want to go back. Before all the hurt. When it was just Aubrey and Liam and that fiery passion between us.
I want to forget.
But I also want to remember.
Like he can sense what I’m feeling right now—how I went from being so cold to burning with heat, he takes a step back.
His eyes narrow, burning with an intensity and a want that sets my body on fire.
My heart dances as I take him in, to allow myself to really look at him for the first time.
His blonde hair is longer than he ever let it get during our time together, and I know him well enough to realize it’s because he doesn’t have to worry about it getting in his eyes anymore.
His shoulders are still broad. Clearly working out, like I had told Karen that he was. I can’t help but wonder if he still goes for a run every morning like he used to? Or does his leg hurt him too much?
“Do you still run?” I blurt.
Why did you say that? With so much more to say to one another…that’s the only thing you can manage?
He chuckles softly, nodding his head. “Yeah, I still run.” He admits, tucking his hands in his pockets, and I know it’s because he doesn’t trust himself not to reach for me, that he is trying very hard to behave as I practically strip him with my ravenous eyes.
“Only a few miles, though, that’s all the leg can handle nowadays. ”
I crack a smile, studying his face. His full lips and slightly crooked nose from the number of times it was broken. It suits him, breaking up his boyish good looks with something more masculine.
God, I want to touch him.
My fingers dance on the ridge of my towel.
The action seems to scare him away as he walks from the bathroom.
After a few minutes of being left alone with nothing but my wildly beating heart and a stomach of nerves, he walks back in with my favorite pair of pajamas in hand, setting them on the sink before stepping back out. As he passes by, I quickly take his hand in mine.
“Thanks,” I mumble, and I swear his hand is trembling.
After a second, I add, “I still have a pair of your sweats and a couple of shirts in my bottom drawer.” I admit it with a slight blush. Amusement dances across his features as if he’s trying to hide his happiness and what it might imply that I kept them.
I could never bring myself to get rid of them.
When he’s gone again, I drop my towel and quickly change.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised he remembered these were my favorites.
But then again, Liam still remembers a lot about me, like how he had offered to get me a burger from Lover’s and how he had played my favorite song, all trying to cheer me up.
I might have been in my own head—but I still recognized the effort he put in.
A warm glow thrums through me. But I let it pass, reminding myself that I still know those things about him, that just because you break up with someone doesn’t mean that you forget everything you once knew about them.
If only that worked, because then I might not be torturing myself like I am now.
I work quickly, brushing my teeth, then my hair—trying not to think too long about how his hands had felt over my hair as he pulled it into a knot. As I finish combing the long strands, desperately trying to fix my bangs going in every direction, I give myself a quick once-over.
I look like shit.
My face is only now returning to its standard color, and my eyes are red and puffy from crying. My hair needs washing, the course strands hanging lifeless.
But I turn around before I lose the nerve.
Am I seriously considering sleeping with my ex? After having a panic attack at the hospital where I lost our baby…that he doesn’t even know about.
My hand hovers on the bathroom door. What the fuck is wrong with me?
I know it will only make things worse, but for some reason, it doesn’t keep the thoughts from running through my mind.
I take a deep breath. Heat might be pooling at my core, my body screaming for attention, for his touch to trail all over me like when he was running his fingertips over my shoulders and back. I shouldn’t want this—I can’t.
No. No. No.
I tell myself. But goosebumps still rise on my neck.
My eyes flutter. My mind wants silence. My body, though—it remembers how good we were together.
We aren’t ready for another emotional connection. But, there is no denying that there is still chemistry, an untold connection on a physical level that we both aren’t prepared to forget.
Not yet.
I let out a breath, my heart hammering as I open the door and gasp.
He’s standing right before me, like he was about to open the door himself.
His gaze trails over me, looking over me seductively. Or…maybe he’s looking at me like he always does.
Shit. I can’t tell, and I don’t trust my judgement right now.
When his eyes meet mine, my heart turns over in response. A tingling creeps into the pit of my stomach, my heart jolts, pulse pounding, his stare disturbing me in all the best ways.
My feet drift on an unseen cloud as I inch toward him. He leans forward, like he’s about to meet me halfway, and suddenly I feel alive, my movements unsteady.
My enormous bedroom suddenly seems too small as I step out of the bathroom. Silence settles around us. I’m no longer cold to the bone. No—I feel warm and heavy, like his gaze alone is enough to thaw me.