miracle | tayley

ive seen you cry way too many times

She'd loved him.

His heart clenches in his chest, because one, hearing her say loved in the past tense had gutted him with the sharp efficiency of a bowie knife, and two, she'd loved him back then, and he hadn't known, and he'd let it, let her, slip away.

"But then what happened?" he asks, desperate to understand her thought process back then, her motivation. "In the morning, what happened? You just changed your mind?" He demands, trying to keep the hurt and anger out of his voice and failing miserably. "Because you just left me there, without a word, a note, anything," he accuses.

"I didn't change my mind, Taylor," she defends. "I- I panicked."

He waits a beat and when she doesn't say more he says, "I'd waited for you, Hayley. For years." And he's being brutally honest now, laying all his cards on the table. "After that night in my parents' basement when we were kids, we just... We just shut that down. We never talked about that part of us, but I never for a second forgot that it was there."

He gives her a second to let that sink in, watches her blink in surprise. "Over the years, people started to assume maybe we just didn't feel that way about each other, but I knew that was bullshit." He ducks his head, making her meet his eyes for this. "So, maybe it was naive, but I... I waited for you to be ready... For us."

He watches her eyes close, his words hitting their mark. "I waited through all your boyfriends, I waited through your fucking marriage." As he says the words, he's realizing the truth in them. He'd never realized before that he'd waited all that time for her, but he had... He'd waited for her for years, biding his time with relationships that never really had a hope in hell of succeeding, because he'd been in love with her for as long as he could remember.

When her eyes open and focus on his once again, he brings his point home. "So, when we had sex that night... I thought that was you coming to a decision. I thought you were finally ready. And I was all in, Hayles." He drops his final card onto the table between them. "I was ready for everything with you."

"Taylor," she whispers, eyes shining with emotion. "I didn't... I didn't know." She pauses, and as he watches her expression turn apologetic, he feels sick. "For me... That wasn't a decision, Taylor, it was a reaction," she says, softly. "It was... It was desperate and impulsive."

He looks hurt now, he can tell just by the change in the expression on her face.

"Hey," she says, quietly, reaching out to take his hand. She hesitates, momentarily, but then threads her fingers through his and squeezes, reassuringly. "It wasn't a mistake, though. I meant it," she says softly.

She struggles to find the right words to try and explain to him all that she'd been feeling during that time in her life. It was a lot, but if they are having this conversation, then they are having this conversation. "I'd been so scared for you for that entire year, and that night I just... I couldn't take the chance of losing you and never knowing what it was like to really be with you... Not because I was too afraid of us to even try."

She goes quiet for a moment, and then, "But that doesn't mean I was any more prepared for you and me than I was at fourteen." She turns their clasped hands over and uses her eyes to trace the prominent veins in his wrist and forearm."Taylor, back then, when we were kids, closing that door was about protecting myself and you, because... I knew if I didn't stop us from doing something stupid, no one would."

She struggles to sort through her own muddled thoughts about that time. "I didn't feel... Protected back then, I guess. I mean, I know our parents loved us, but they weren't there anymore, not for the day-to-day stuff. They didn't see how grown we were when we were away from them, how the tour pushed us, how our own fans and our label pushed us, to be... More. I trusted you, and that made it so dangerous and scary for me, because I knew how easy it would be to slip up and ruin everything, for both of us. So, yeah... At fourteen, and fifteen, and eighteen, and pretty much every age, it scared the hell out of me, to be with you like that. Physically, emotionally. I mean, I was close to the other boys too, but there was always something different there with us. You know that."