Between Never and Forever

by Shain Rose

“I don’t really give a fuck if someone sees me with my girlfriend.” The way he emphasized the label made the butterflies in my stomach flutter and then immediately scatter from the whoosh of fear I felt.

“It’s been a whole damn year, Kee. A year of me loving you, and a year of you wanting me to keep it a secret. For what?”

The clouds were rolling in for the night just as clouds were rolling in for our relationship too.

“I don’t want anybody but you.” His dark eyebrows dipped low as he tipped my chin up and rubbed it with his thumb, back and forth, back and forth. “You can have me here,” I whispered. “Just not out there.” “I want you every-fucking-where.”

We both stomped through the woods, branches under our boots cracking and breaking like I thought my heart might.

I put my life in their hands because a body shifts into survival mode and trusts who it must. Deep in my bones, I knew I could trust Dex.

You shouldn’t have saved me, Dex.” Her voice was broken and full of pain as she said it. “I’ll always save you, Kee. Don’t you get that?”

She was trying to leave when all she had to do was stay. “I can’t be with you, Dex.” “Fine. Don’t be with me.” I shrugged, acting as though the words didn’t feel like a knife to my gut. Then, trying to temper my reaction, I rubbed a hand over my face before I continued. “But you can’t leave. You’re Dimitri’s best friend. Your family needs you, and I…” I needed her too. Didn’t she know that by now?

Everyone deserved to hear this girl sing, even if I wanted to bottle up her voice and keep it all to myself.

“You leave this town, I’ll never forgive you. You get that?” “Dex, this isn’t how I want it to end. We could be friends and—” “I’ll never be your friend.” The words came out fast with fury. “I’ve told you I love you; I’ve promised myself to you. I want to marry you…not be your friend.” She gasped at my confession, yet I continued on. “You’ve always been my girl, my girlfriend, my future wife. Nothing less. Don’t you get that? I promised you forever, Kee.”

forever can never be, Dex.” She choked back a sob, but this time I didn’t pull her to my chest like I had so many times before. She tried to cover her mouth with the back of her hand to hide her turmoil. “Yeah. You pack that bag and leave, you can bet it’ll never be.” She narrowed her eyes then, glared through her tears, and said, “Maybe one day you’ll overlook this, and we’ll be friends.” “Never happening, Keelani. Never in a million years.” My girl was stubborn. She still packed up that night and left me.

My heart beat fast as I stared at him. The years had been good to him. His chest was wider, his gaze stronger, his hate for me probably strongest.

I forgot how intense the electric shock was between us, how the air shifted, how the world seemed to stop. It was my turn to step back right into the corner of the house away from his proximity. He smelled like cedar and spice. It was just another damn thing I missed that I couldn’t get over.

maybe my coming home had nothing to do with you at all because I barely even think of you.” His eyes widened at my statement, and I saw the hurt flash in them before it morphed to anger. “You really think I believe that?” No. How could I when I thought of him weekly, daily, hourly?

he slammed his mouth hard into mine, his full lips moving with the purpose of dominating mine. There was no passion in that kiss, only pure hate and the intent to show me he had the upper hand.

Years we’d been apart, but instantly, my body remembered him. Every part of me wanted him. I submitted immediately because he was the only one who’d ever made me feel that way.

he pulled my head back to gain more access, to tower over me as he tasted what he didn’t even want. I whimpered at that thought. He didn’t even want me anymore. I felt it in how he kissed me with no appreciation or love.

He was still a comfort I couldn’t deny myself, a home to me after all this time. He was the person I felt safest with even though I knew I shouldn’t.

How was I supposed to get over the love I left behind when I’d never wanted to leave him behind in the first place? I needed to tell him that at least.

“You scared of a few memories?” He looked me up and down like my love for him had been some childish thing.

When we were young, I could run out into the backyard, across our field, through some woods and into the line of lilac bushes my father had planted so long ago. Mom had set up a little gate that I’d unlock with a gold key and then leave open. If Dex saw it, he’d make his way down into the woods and find me. We’d spent hours there.

“Your parents have better things to do than keep up a little garden that means nothing, Keelani.” He was right, for reasons he didn’t even know. And as the clouds rolled in, the lingering smell of them turned painful, agonizing. It filled me with sadness as he stared at me and our space with complete apathy.

this garden meant something to me,” I admitted. “It meant something to us.” His green eyes scanned the area. “A high school crush is barely something to fret over.” Flippantly, he dismissed all we’d had. “Is that all it was to you?” “What more could it be? You left and moved on. So did I.” Why did I want him to not mean it? Why did I need him to hurt like I did? Because I still loved him. I still dreamed of this spot. I still held on to the taste of his lips, the feel of his hands, the way his heart beat with mine.

He stepped close to me and put his hand on my cheek as one tear fell from my eye. His thumb immediately brushed it away, like he was taking care of me even while the words he said were cold.

“Do you feel something when I kiss you, Kee? Tell me. Do you get butterflies?” This time he kissed me softly, so softly. My eyes fluttered closed to take in how featherlight his touch could be, how he could treat me like I was precious. “I feel everything,” I confessed because I at least could honor our relationship even if he wouldn’t. I opened my eyes to search his. “I want you still, Dex.”

“Soaking already. Such a fucking good all-American girl. You built that brand so well, Keelani.” He sneered the name. “Do you think they know you still get wet for me like this?”

I couldn’t stop what was about to happen because I wanted him there in that grass, alone in our garden among the lilacs and memories we once had. Maybe I was lonely, maybe I was still torn apart from what had happened before, or maybe I simply still loved him. No one forgets a regret as big as losing your first love. No one survives it without scars and pain. I wanted to heal us in that moment, and I wanted him to want that too.

“You didn’t respond, Dex,” I whispered. “I didn’t respond because it was you who left,” he said. “You chose to have me only like this. You’re the heartbreaker here, Kee, not me.”

“This pussy is still so tight. It’s begging for me and only me to fill it up, fuck you into oblivion, and make this good girl be bad. No one else can do that like me, you know that don’t you?”

I needed him any way I could get him. But I’d lost him. And I didn’t know if I’d ever get him back. Maybe the Dex I knew was gone forever and this man was left in his wake.

She had always fought fire with fire. I deserved her swearing at me, but I didn’t care, not after what she’d done, not after she’d left me for ruin. And then she asked for a last time. Didn’t she know we’d never even really gotten started?

Her body still knew what it needed from me, and I wasn’t above giving her that. We stared into each other’s eyes until I saw hers drifting shut. “Just tell me, Dex. Get it over with.” “Because you don’t deserve that part of me when you can’t give me all of you.”

Her pussy tightened on me, too, as she screamed out my name. Over and over. It wasn’t enough to heal the pain she’d inflicted, but the anger and the turmoil stopped flowing through my veins for a second. She was here with me, and it was all I really wanted. I loved the girl even if she didn’t love me enough to stay.

“I want all of you here, where we always did everything. I want this memory with you.” Another memory. Not a present or a future, just a past. Did she realize it felt like a dagger every time she talked about us this way?

The lilacs brought out a hint of violet in her eyes even though they looked devastated as she realized what was happening. “I don’t want to fuck you in the middle of a garden, Kee.” “Dex—” “I don’t really want to fuck with you at all anymore.” I said the words aloud so we could both believe them. “I want to talk. I can explain—” “There’s nothing to explain. Neither of us lives here anymore. You’re not a part of my life. And I never want you to be.”

I wanted to hold her. I wanted to tell her we’d be all right.

“Stop calling me. Go live that glitzy life you always wanted.” I needed this closure, and so did she.

How could I keep the cycle of our hell going? We were broken, and we kept breaking each other. One of us had to stop.

“That’s what you think it was? Just some childhood crush?” Her eyes narrowed now as I sat back on my haunches. “What else would it be?” A love so profound that I’d never get over it, but I couldn’t share that. My pride had already been lost to her once.

The way she looked at me with dejection, I swear it made the air shift around us. That garden would haunt me for years to come. “Do you really think I don’t love you?” What she didn’t understand was that this whole town had turned on me. Even my parents questioned how much I’d given her to drink that night. And her parents, well, I couldn’t face them after the PR stunt that was pulled. I distanced myself completely, compartmentalizing it all in order to survive. I came home, I engaged with my family, and then I left.

My heart was calloused over after years of the town’s questioning, after years of interrogating myself also. Never again would I lose control like that and let love steer me into something that wasn’t right. So, I shut her down.

“I don’t know, Kee. All I know is that you said you didn’t love me once.” “I didn’t mean it.” I stepped back and away from her. “Yes, well, I mean it when I say I don’t love you now.” I didn’t mean it either.

It felt freeing to disappear in a crowd and only be wanted for what I did best, which was sing.

Some songs were ones I’d literally sung to him years ago in the lilacs, where I’d begged him to do more with me when we were just kids. And he'd always said then, “You want to keep me a secret, you can wait to do more with me until I’m not one, Kee.” The problem was that I never wanted him to be a secret. I just needed him to be. My songs were apologies to him, love notes to him, heartbreak about him.

I sang about forever. I sang about a love that would never be lost. I sang about him. About forever with Dex, even if I couldn’t have it.

This was either going to be the place I healed or the place I was completely destroyed. Suddenly, I wanted to be healed or destroyed. I wanted the closure. For the first time in years, I looked out at him and felt peace.

Keelani Hale shouldn’t have been on that stage. She shouldn’t have been in my resort, on my property, or even in this city. She wasn’t fucking welcome. I’d left behind our hometown, my life, and my damn heart to move on and away from her. Hadn’t I made that clear?

A week after Keelani and I had our last rendezvous in her family’s lilac garden, my phone pinged me her location. She was with Ethan Phillipe at a fucking event. She’d gone back to singing and hanging on Ethan’s arm with my little brother as her best friend. I’d deleted her contact out of my phone, stopped practically stalking her whereabouts then and there. Before that, I’d basically built software to track her every move. So, I cut it all off. I left behind my heart, closed the door on my life with her, and focused on work. I excelled at that.

Our past had ruined us. Ripped our hearts apart and left the destruction for us to clean up. We’d mended ourselves in the only way we knew how. I didn’t text or call him after that last day together in the woods. I tried my best to move on. But when someone breaks a person’s heart, their words echo around them forever.

This time, my eyes filled with real tears and not because I’d lost another damn cent. Dex Hardy’s voice somehow still had a hold on me. He wanted a truth I couldn’t give him right then. He’d wanted the truth for years. He’d never get it, though, and he’d never forgive me. I’d left him behind even though I’d always looked back, and he’d never known it.