Chapter One

"Please…don't…" I told him.

"Elizabeth," he muttered, "I can't do this." His hands were shaking. I wondered if he knew that I was averting my eyes from his gaze to avoid seeing how beautiful he was even now. Every smile…every expression…every piece of me was possessed by his entrancing hazel eyes. They told a story. He grew up with two deep dimples on each side of a grin, but he lost them. The dimples slowly disappeared with every backhand from his father and hysterical fit his mother threw. His sister's abandonment to his family only hollowed out his feeling of happiness and sense of trust in the ones he loved. My mother called him a lost cause; someone so overboard there was no use in turning the ship around.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

My heart was fighting with my rib cage like a life-sentenced prisoner behind cell bars. The erratic beating was distracting me from losing all of myself in that one forsaken moment. The tips of my fingers were daring to extend out and clutch at the nape of his neck. If I hold on to him physically can he leave? The question rolled around in my head. I held my hands together behind my back and hoped that they wouldn't have a mind of their own. They did.

Within a second his body was locked against mine and our breathing was in perfect synchronization. Each exhale of his was a cue for me to inhale…if only for a moment. His lips reached my forehead and his breath was hot against the numb feeling my blood was circulating through my body. My heart was going to give out right before his eyes. If I collapsed I'd rather be left on the soiled pavement, alone, rather than in his arms confused and incoherent. Someone might as well have been stabbing the back of my throat with sewing needles, because I was choking on fourteen months of disappointment and tears.

My forever would have been a freeze frame of that moment, and only that exact moment. Never moving, never changing, never destructive. He was still mine; all his warmth, his strength, his heart. The world was collapsing around me and the wall around my heart began to reconstruct itself immediately.

"Elizabeth…" he whispered.

"This wasn't part of our plan," I stuttered out, "now there is no you and I"

The pain in looking away from his hazel eyes was more intense than walking away from his driveway on Lochart Dr. for the last time.