Page 37 of Somewhere Only We Know (Healing in Cincy #4)

JAX

COLLEGE, DECEMBER, SENIOR YEAR

“ I knew you were coming back. ”

Six words. I remember saying those six words to him and the smile he gave me. Was it all a lie? Because I can’t imagine a world where we made promises for our future just for him to text me those eight words and nothing more.

I think back to the day I told him we could be nothing more than friends. I was afraid of losing him more than anything. How he was adamant that us falling apart was all in my head. That it would never happen.

Look where I’m at now.

I sit on my covered balcony as the snow falls a few days before Christmas. Heartbroken and alone. Christmas is my second favorite holiday, but I’ve yet to find an ounce of joy to get me through the season.

I feel like I’m walking on a glass floor in the pointiest high heels and trying not to crash through with every step.

My parents have been walking on eggshells around me too.

Because after a week of texting Nate with no response until that one fated message, they found me sobbing in my room.

And through those tears I managed to tell them that he wasn’t coming back.

That fear I had over losing him came true.

For months he and I would spout hypotheticals about when he was on the road for games, how I would react. I always told him I wouldn’t react a certain way because I knew he was coming back.

My lips tremble with the realization that he’s not coming back this time. And I have to find a way to make it without him sooner than I planned to.

How did my sister do this? I thought she was overreacting when Mason left, but is this how she felt? Like she all of a sudden was missing an extension of herself?

The tears win the battle and fall in rivulets down my face. Washing away every plan we made, tear by tear.

Goodbye, Nathan Holloway.