The Reason

Chapter Five

Time – it can either heal you or kill you a little more inside with each passing second. For me, it's most definitely been the latter of the two. For three weeks, I've thought of little else but Rex. There have been so many times that I've wanted to contact him. I had meant to. It's just, I was kind of hoping that he would first. As the days slowly rolled into one another, it just got harder and harder to make that call. So I didn't, and now three weeks have numbly passed.

Although I haven't wanted to admit it to myself, I know that for the second time in my life, I have lost Rex.

That in itself, cuts deeper than deep. I am inwardly ripped apart and it's only the normality of life around me that is holding me together.

I know he wasn't mine to lose, but that doesn't stop me from missing him. This missing is different to the one that I had carried around with me for those intolerable nine years before. This missing is worse, because now I carry around with me a hopeless feeling of hope; a ridiculously stupid feeling of hope.

I keep hoping that I am wrong. That I haven't lost Rex all over again.

I shouldn't be thinking this way.

It's stupid to even think that Rex would ever want me again.

It's also stupid to think that it could ever work again.

No good will ever come from us being together because the truth will always eventually destroy what we have.

Rex still wants the truth.

I still can't give him that truth.

Once again, we are over before we have even begun. It's emotionally draining and its emotionally frustrating. I want what I can't have and it's slowly killing me a little more inside each and every day.

The less I hear from Rex, the more that I want him. My sad soul wants to rebel, it wants me to fight for him. The hope within me relentlessly keeps telling me that Rex was brought back into my life for a very good reason, then the honest part of myself tells me that it's merely my punishment for what I did to him. If my punishment is for Rex to be thrown back into my unfulfilled life, I'll gladly accept it because it means that I have been given the chance to see him again. It's the knowing what to do with him being back in my life that I'm having a really hard time with. You see, everything goes back to that desperate kiss and his words spoken just before that desperate kiss. "I don't want to want you, but I do."

That kiss, those words...they meant something.

It's that something that makes me want to push my research into Saxon artefacts completely out of the way and call him right this second. Such a ridiculous thought falters in my mind, only to be ambushed by the overpowering memory of his demanding kiss. That memory alone wills me to start fighting back. To fight for the only man that I have ever truly loved. Before I even have time to question whether I should call or not, I can hear his mobile phone already ringing in my ear.

"Hello." His quiet hello is coated in aloof familiarity, so I'm guessing he already knows that it's me who is calling him.

My heart frantically thuds within me, which only escalates to the sound of his voice. "I didn't think you'd answer." I freely admit, so very pleased that he has.

"What's up?" He asks in an offhand manner.

Although I'm quickly filling with dread, and any confidence that I had is quickly leaving me, I still try not to react to his curtness. "I was just wondering if you were okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Once again, his reply is pointed and gruffly blunt.

I'm quickly realising that this conversation is going in completely the opposite direction to which I was hoping it would go. It hurts when Rex talks to me in this way; an annoyed tone of indifference.