Suddenly Forbidden (Gray Springs University, #1)

by Ella Fields

We trudged back through the weeds with grins on our faces and the stars glowing behind us like a smiling audience.

“Like every time we spoke, the distance between us could be felt, and we were slipping even further away from each other.

Voices traveled out in the hall, doors slamming as we both absorbed the quiet notes of uncertainty that lay ahead. New lives, new beginnings, and a chance to rekindle old flames or find new ones.

“I’m not scared. You and me … like the moon and the stars, we’re permanent.”

“Gotten stronger every fucking day, month, and year. To the point where you’ve become a permanent part of me, and I don’t know if I could ever exist without you.”

I wanted to live in these minutes forever.

noting the changes and the way his eyes started to see the world differently. To see me differently.

Sadness encompassed me, washing over my head like a bucket of ice water as it dawned on me that he wasn’t mine to stare at anymore. I shouldn’t even be looking at him like this.

The moon and the stars. It didn’t seem right for one to exist without the other. Yet here I was, being forced to do so anyway.

Lashes bobbing, he shifted his eyes from my cheek to meet mine, and the universe seemed to shrink in size.

He tasted like beer but also just like I remembered.

She was my first in every way, in a way that messed up something fundamental inside me when I realized we weren’t going to be each other’s last.

We more than meant a lot to each other. We were the breeze that ruffled the dandelions. The sun that scorched our skin red until we searched for reprieve under our favorite willow tree. And underneath the stretch of dark skies, we were each other’s stars.

That was the thing about first love. People often said a first love stayed with you long after you met your second, third, or even fourth love. What they failed to mention was that kind of permanence resonated deeper for some and made it almost impossible to let go. Leaving you to walk the earth feeling as though you were constantly missing a part of yourself.

This thing called love didn’t work like that. It never played fair.

For magic had a way of disappearing, leaving you with an empty illusion of what you thought you once had.

The silence stretched between us.

Nostalgia and longing wrapped me in its dizzying, cold embrace as I wondered when I might get to go back there again. Home.

He caught me as if I were made of feathers, and that was exactly how it felt to be held by him again. As though I were floating. Adrift someplace wonderfully foreign, yet home at the same time.

can’t stop. I can’t do this anymore. It’s you and me. It was always meant to be you and me, and I’m done trying to fight it.”

“You smell and taste like my heart,” he whispered to the underside of my chin, pressing lazy kisses. “And you feel like fucking heaven.”

I had the fleeting thought of them being lovers, meeting out in the dark under the cover of stars. The moon and a few strangers their only witnesses.

Funny how emotions and lust could blind you and make your focus narrow to only right then. Right now. Forget what could happen after.

She’d destroyed everything that mattered to me. And rightfully deserved or not, I needed to let it hurt.

Maybe it’d always hurt when I remembered what he’d done, and the regret I still held. But I knew, deep down, the hurt would be so much worse, quite possibly endless, if I couldn’t forgive him.

Maybe you didn’t always need to try to capture beauty. Sometimes, you simply needed to experience it, let it seep into you and fill your soul with color instead.

“Sometimes, I come down here just to remember where we began. To remember that we happened.”

“Because without the stars, the moon is left alone to battle the dark.”

Heartache could be felt for not only yourself, but also for those around you. Even when they’ve hurt you.

I needed to realize that every action has a reaction, and things don’t always turn out how you believe they will.”

Because even with all the ammunition fired at our hearts, we’d found our way back to each other.

The pain, the sorrow, and the fear. It’s all there. And the rough, raw, unpolished quality to it only makes the emotion speak louder, telling a story that’s hard to read but important and real nonetheless.”

Happy endings didn’t always arrive for a lot of people.

I could acknowledge how fortunate I was and had no intentions of taking it for granted. Especially after I thought he might be lost to me forever.

But I didn’t care. It was true. Not everyone would get a happy ending. But I’d gotten mine. And I wouldn’t apologize for it anymore.

It felt like I was right where I was meant to be.

Twilight had come to visit once again. Days out here felt infinite with the rise of the sun, yet never long enough by the time you saw it fade from existence for the night.

Life sometimes called for that, though—not being creepy, but appreciative. I had a lot to be appreciative for, and I damn well knew it.

Forever was a term often thrown around with too much ease and little thought for what it really meant.

Some things were simply irrefutable and inescapable. The stars, the moon, and the way my heart would always beat in sync with hers. And with enough forgiveness, love, and trust, not even forever could stop us.