Always Only You by Chloe Liese (z-lib.org).epub

Aiden chucks his water at the ground. “What, so he can drive here and beat
the snot out of me for hurting his sister? No, thanks. You’re the listener in the
family.”
I drop my axe to the ground with a thud. “You hurt Freya?”
Aiden lifts his hands and leans away. “Not physically. Jesus, Ren, what do
you think of me?”
“Doesn’t matter. Emotional wounds are just as painful, sometimes more so.”
Scrambling to stand, Aiden locks eyes with me. “I didn’t mean to hurt her,
Ren. I don’t even know when it happened. All I know is that I got off-track with
her at some point. I’ve been busy lately, a little distracted.
“I missed something, I’m not sure what, but she’s angry with me. Really
angry. I begged her to talk it through, told her I wanted to fix it, but she said…”
He scrubs a hand over his face and looks toward the water nearby. “She said she
needed time. That she doesn’t know if it can be fixed.”
When he glances over at me, his eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot. He
looks shattered. “I can’t lose her.”
“So don’t. Go home and fight for her.”
He laughs but it breaks with emotion. “How do you fight for someone who
doesn’t want to be fought for? How do you repair something that they say is
irrevocably broken?”
“You show up and demonstrate hope. You show her that, yes, things break,
and they’ll never be what they were before, but when you piece them together,
they can still be beautiful, only different.”
Thunder rumbles in the distance, followed by a fat raindrop that lands on my
cheek and slides down.
Aiden sighs. “She’s never been like this. I’ve never seen her so bleak. That
light that’s always in Freya’s eyes was gone.”
“So go put it back.” I shove a handful of wood in his arms. “Quit hiding here
and go fight for what you promised to fight for. Love for a lifetime, thick or thin,
sickness and health…”
God, the words just rip through me, like a hot knife. I kick a pile of wood
and storm off. Aiden’s wise enough to leave me alone. I hear him dump his
armful and traipse back into the cabin. For his own good, I hope it’s to pack up
and go home.
Droplets of rain become a waterfall. The sky blackens, thunder booms, and
though I’m under a canopy of trees, I flagrantly avoid caution and wander
through them, scooping up twigs and smacking anything I can like I would line
up pucks for drills.
It’s not enough. Circling back to the clearing, I pick up the axe and go at the