I nodded, understanding. “All right. I get it. I wish you all the best, Bree. If anyone deserves a happily ever after, it’s you.”

“You deserve one, too, Axel. I don’t know what happened to you after you left, but hopefully now that you have some answers and closure, you can move on and find your own happiness.”

With a smile, she closed the door and then walked to her car parked across the lot. I waited until she started the engine and backed up before I pulled out and left. During my drive home, I couldn’t stop the questions that slammed into me. All the things I’d wanted to ask about, but didn’t think to. I wanted to hear about her dad and how that relationship worked for her. I wanted to ask if she’d made any friends, if she’d found any peers that she could trust. I wanted to know everything that had happened to her in the last six and a half years, but I’d lost my chance. She didn’t want to see me again, and I’m sure after knowing about my spot by the lake, she wouldn’t show back up there again. I didn’t have her phone number, or any contact information. My only chance of getting the answers would be if we ran into each other again. And since we’d lived in the same town for six months, never really running into one another, I didn’t know when or if that would ever happen.

Intense emotions hit me once I fell into my bed. And they carried into my subconscious as I drifted off, sleep finally taking over. A familiar dream settled in, one I’d had countless times before, so vivid and real as if it’d really happened in that moment. It was of Aubrey’s hands roaming across my bare chest. My lips on hers. Her voice telling me how much she loved me, and my whispers of love in return. Her need pouring from her in waves, and my inability to turn her down. Then, I fisted her hair in my hands. Her nails dug into my back. The hottest heat I’d ever felt consumed me, rooted within me, filling me up until I couldn’t take it anymore. But like every time before, the second just before giving in, I woke up. Fuzzy images filled me with euphoria right before reality slapped me in the face.

As my eyes opened, the ache in my chest festered. Heavy regret pressed down on my ribcage, threatening to stop the beating of my heart. Remorse suffocated me, stealing the breath from my lungs. All because of the love I had for Bree. There was no denying it. I couldn’t pretend it never existed, or even convince myself that it wasn’t real. I couldn’t hide from it or make the ache go away. It was genuine and raw, powerful and unrelenting. Haunting. But I had to let it go. I had to learn to live with this hole in my chest, this deep ache in my gut, and the overwhelming emptiness inside. I had to learn to move on, like she had.

I had to learn to live again.

I had to learn to love again.

And I had to do that alone.

There’d been so many times in the past when I thought I’d seen Bree in public, so as I turned the corner in the grocery store the following Sunday, I had to take a double glance at the woman in front of me. I’d been let down so many times before when it’d turn out to be someone else. However, this time, I kept waiting for the let down, for the realization that it wasn’t her…yet it never came.

Mere feet from me stood Bree, reading the back of a condiment bottle. We’d spent six months in the same town, never meeting face to face, but after finally speaking, after we’d finally acknowledged each other, it seemed fate had intervened. Fate had brought her back to me again. I had to take that as a sign.

“Do you even know how to pronounce some of the ingredients on that label?” I asked as I came up behind her, nearly whispering into her ear.

She shuddered, froze, and then placed the salad dressing bottle back in the empty spot on the shelf. She turned to face me, squaring her shoulders as if to gather her courage to face me. “No. And I don’t really care to try. I was just hoping you wouldn’t see me and would keep walking.” She didn’t allow me a chance to become offended before the corners of her lips turned up.

“Oh, it’s like that now? We can’t be friendly and say hello when we see each other?” I teased back. “Listen, I know this is awkward and weird. I mean, we had a relationship, a real relationship, and then we’ve both spent years apart without an ounce of closure. But I don’t want to avoid you in public. I don’t want to turn the other way if I happen to find myself in the same aisle as you.”

Her shoulders relaxed as she focused on the floor. “I don’t know how to act around you, Axel. I don’t know what you want me to say. We got everything out the other day. Why do we have to keep talking?” She held onto her shopping basket as if it protected her…the way I should have.

I glanced at the silver band on her finger and waited for her to turn her attention back to me. “Before we realized our feelings for each other, we were friends. Talking was never hard for us.”

“You want to be friends?”

“I want something, Bree. I know I can’t have you the way I did before, and that we can’t have that kind of relationship again…but I want something. Something to prove that what we did share wasn’t imaginary.” I wanted to smack myself for sounding so weak, so pussy-whipped. But in reality, that’s what I was.

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea. We’ve proved that we can’t be just friends. We know all too well how destructive we are together.”

“That’s a lie, and you know it. We were never destructive together.”

“Okay, maybe you’re right. But that doesn’t change how being together nearly destroyed us both. I don’t know about you, but I can’t handle another disaster like that.” She lowered the basket, dropping it at her side. “I don’t know what you expect, Axel.”

I mentally chastised myself. What did I think she’d say? She was married, which meant I had no business in her life at all. She had a point, and even though I didn’t want to give in, I had no choice but to concede. “I get it. But knowing you’re here, seeing you out and about, makes me feel like my right arm has been cut off and dangled in front of my face.”

She licked her lips and met my eyes with her sad gaze. “I know the feeling. Which only makes it harder to talk to you and play nice. Sometimes, the best thing to do is the same thing that hurts the most.”

Heavy emotion clogged my throat. I wanted to ask her so many things, but my time was up. Our moment had passed, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I had to suck it up, pull on my big-boy pants, and accept the consequences of my actions, regardless of the regret I’d held over them.

I nodded once to her, and without a word, turned and walked away with my tail tucked tightly between my legs. The only thing that helped me remain calm was an overwhelming feeling that Fate was not done with us quite yet.

That evening, I received a phone call from the school I’d been subbing at. They had a teacher that suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized, and they needed a long-term substitute with the possibility of permanency. I accepted without hesitation.

I walked into the classroom feeling lighter, better, knowing this would be the new start I needed. And the students didn’t let me down. Teaching kindergarten wasn’t the easiest, and I knew a lot of teachers that refused to take on the challenge. I also had a lot of teachers ask me why I’d chosen primary education. I could never tell them the real reason, only that I loved kids and wanted to point them in the right direction as early as possible. It was believable, and partially the truth. I’m sure there’d be complaints had I admitted that teaching five-year-olds protected me from falling in love with a student, losing my job, and becoming an alcoholic…again. So I decided to keep that to myself.