Never Have I Ever

Chapter 29

its me can you believe it?? i scraped this together to give you guys something. i love you all for sticking with me!!

this is basically nash's POV of the whole mess, i'll have another chapter sooner or later 

Chapter 28

(Nash)

When I woke up her elbow was digging into my throat and her cheek was pressed up against my collarbone and panic immediately made my throat close up.

I love you.

I'd said it, fuck, and it felt good but also terrifying and scary but so god damned good to finally say it to her. I shifted so she wasn't elbowing me anymore and she murmured in her sleep. Her hand spread across my chest, making a shudder go through me, and I felt pathetic for it.

"Nash ... love you," she said in her sleep her eyebrows furrowing and then relaxing, and her easy breathing resumed.

Panic clawed at my chest, fast and heavy, and I knew right then I was gone on her. I was so fucking gone on her. I knew I wouldn't be the same if lost her. She'd take something right from me, something vital, something that couldn't be replaced. I traced a finger over her cheekbone, and I couldn't lose her, too. Not after Tommy. Not after Tom. You think if you lose someone, it would make it easier to keep losing people. All it did was make me want to make sure I never lost anyone again. And I couldn't lose this girl. I fucking couldn't. I was too young to think it, I supposed, to think that she was it for me. But sometimes you just knew. And looking at her, I knew.

And it scared the living shit out of me. More than almost anything ever had. I felt panic claw up my throat until I felt suffocated with it, rubbing a hand over my too long hair, and then down my face again. 

So I got up feeling like an asshole, and covered her back with the blanket and leaned down to brush my hand over her cheek, all soft skin and peacefulness on her face, and I'd never really thought a girl was truly beautiful until her. I was driving before I knew it and I felt like an coward and I was one. Familiar streets that I knew like the back of my hand led me to that field, that I could picture with my eyes closed. That linked me to nights alone with a bottle of something that made things fuzzy, and nights not so alone with a girl I had just left alone in my bed.

My stomach muscles clenched just like they always did when I came here, and I fisted my hands so hard it hurt so that I could focus on something, anything else, other than, your brother is gone, you just left Aria, idiot idiot idiot, you fucking idiot.

Tom, I thought reflexively. Tommy. 

Did the loss ever get easier? I asked myself that all the time, deep down I knew the answer would be that no it didn't, it just gets easier to ignore. Easier to not think of them every single second, of everyday. (That was a lie, if there was ever a lie I could tell. Because I thought of him every second. There was never a time when it wouldn't shock me, roll through my body like an electric current, my brother died. He's actually dead. Over and over again.)

And then, I thought about Aria helplessly like always, her face appearing in my mind without permission, invading my thoughts. I wondered if that happened with everyone in love, or just me. Just my inability to not think about her all the time.

"Someday some girl is going to make you fall to your knees," Tom had grinned down at me, holding me in a headlock. I'd snorted at fourteen years old and tried to breathe but my face was slowly turning red from his hold on me.

"Yeah right," I had snickered in disgust and disbelief. Thought to myself, love. It was ridiculous to me at fourteen, and still, even after Tom had died, right up until I had fallen so far into it that I couldn't get out. And who was I kidding, I didn't want to get out.