Tell Me I'm Different (Finished!)

(22) Hold Me

Her heart hammered in her chest as she said, 

“Ace you’d be just fine without me, and you have been fine for the past seventeen years without me.”

His brows furrowed and his hands dropped from her body. He moved away and began pacing the room quickly. There was a sense of anger in his body language Skye couldn’t quite place.

Suddenly, he stopped and stared right at Skye.

“You’re so wrong you don’t even know. For my whole life, I’ve been so unhappy and I didn’t even know why. Yeah maybe it is some mental thing, but the truth is that I felt so out of place. It was like I was playing this character in some stupid sitcom except it was for seventeen years. I was so close to just ending it, I don’t think you get how much I wanted to just die. And then by some weird coincidence, I meet you. And suddenly everything feels so right even though it’s so wrong. And I know if you leave me now, things will go back to the way they were and I can’t do it. I can’t.”

Skye wiped the tears that settled in the corners of her eyes. How could this boy that she had just met already make such a profound influence on her? What he said made her realize that that was exactly how she had been feeling her whole life.

Skye looked up to find Ace with tears in his own eyes. He was staring at the door intently, like it held the answer to all his problems. She knew at that moment, he had never told anyone this. His revelation was more intimate than the sex they had.

She crossed the length of the small room to Ace and wordlessly, she wrapped her arms around him and began sobbing like she had never cried before. Ace couldn’t help it. He grabbed Skye so tightly, tight enough that he could feel her heart drum against his own bare skin. He surrendered. They fell limply to the wooden floor; a mess of tear stained faces and discovered need.

They held each other like their life depended on it. Neither of them wanted to let go, for fear that it might be forever. Skye couldn’t believe how good this felt. How much she needed it. It felt like every fiber of her being was tingling with his skin on her. Every emotion Skye had bottled up since the dawn of time was let loose all because of his touch.

“Ace, you need to leave, now,” Skye said desperately, wiping away any of her remaining tears.

A look of confusion settled in his eyes. Suddenly, his eyes softened and it was like a switch went off in his head. He understood why she wanted him to leave.

“I know about the baby,” he said quietly.

She turned around so she wouldn’t have to see the look on his face. She was so afraid it would be a look of disgust.

“It’s not even about that,” she started.

For a few minutes she was incapable of even forming words. She knew she shouldn’t, it was so stupid to, but she said,

“Her name was Cara,” Skye’s voice cracked and tears began to pool in the corner of her eyes again.

Ace grabbed her shoulders and pulled her towards him, so that she was practically sitting on his lap.

“She’s my daughter too,” he said into her hair.

Skye’s body almost collapsed when he said this. Why did he have to go and be so understanding? She would’ve been better off if he walked away right then, at least she’d be used to that. But this, this compassion, she wasn’t familiar with at all.

Skye wanted to push him away and tell him to run for his life before he found everything out, but she couldn’t let him go. He embraced her and it felt like it was impossible to think of a time before him.