The Trouble with Kissing Connor

Chapter 45- Sadie

I was awake when he'd kissed me and told me he loved me, but I was afraid that if I opened my eyes and looked at him, I would beg him not to go, that I would cancel my entire trip and stay in bed with him forever.

So I pretended to be asleep and let him walk out, climb out of my window and out of my life. Well, the life that we knew anyway. By the end of the week, Connor would be living in another state and going to another school, and starting a whole new life without me. I would still have to go to the same school, though, without him. I would have to wake up every morning, knowing that he wasn't just across the lawn. I wouldn't be able to climb through his window whenever I wanted to and chat with him when I felt bored...

And then soon, in a few month's time, we would be separated by hundreds of miles and oceans and mountains.

I rolled over onto my side and felt the hot, wet tears running down the sides of my face and onto my pillow—Am I doing the right thing letting him go? Everything about it felt wrong. Every tiny, microscopic fibre in my body was screaming at me that this was WRONG. My heart was breaking and crumbling and the pain was unbearable. I turned over and smelt the pillow that Connor had slept on. It was still warm with his scent. I grabbed it and pulled it closer.

You hear that corny phrase, 'making-love' and you think it only applies to people in day time television shows and romance novels. But it doesn't. That's what had happened that night with Connor and I. He'd been so gentle and every touch and kiss and movement had felt like pure love. I buried my face into the pillow and bit it, it was all I could do to stop myself from screaming from the pain.

I had just lost the love of my life and no one could make me feel better right now...

I opened my eyes, climbed out of bed and grabbed a nightgown. I opened the door to my room quietly and ran down the passage. I opened the door to McKenzie's room and slipped in. She was already up and as soon as I stepped through the door she held her arms out for me. I fell into my sisters arms and she wrapped me up tightly while I cried silently into her shoulder. Connor was gone, but at least I had something precious back in my life.

I stopped crying and rested my head on her shoulder. She started to rub my back in such a familiar and reassuring way. And then I remembered the last time she'd done that. We were six, and I'd fallen out of the tree. My mother had rushed me to the ER and I'd gotten ten stitches in my knee.

Mackenzie had sat behind me on the doctor's table the whole time rubbing my back as they stitched me up. Then, it had taken ten minutes for me to be fixed and feel better. I wondered how long she would have to rub my back now while my heart somehow mended itself.

"Sadie..." She whispered into my ear, "if it's meant to be, it will be."