Chapter 26-Second chance at us

Chapter 26: 26-Second chance at us

Aymara slowly opened her eyes, her head pounding painfully.

Her pupils trembled slightly as fragmented memories of the suffering she experienced the day the apocalypse arrived in her past life surfaced in her mind.

She drew a deep breath before releasing it. She let go of the tension in her shoulders.

The room became silent again after the call ended. Aymara placed Nathaniel’s phone back on the bedside table and stood there for a long moment.

She had warned Noel and had done her part which was more than she got in her first life. Whatever happened next was his responsibility.

She wasn’t going to open her fortress to everyone simply because they were friends with Nathaniel.

In the apocalypse, friendship wouldn’t fill an empty stomach. It wouldn’t stop a bullet, protect someone from a mutated creature, create medicine, or make clean water appear from nowhere. Additionally, friends were more dangerous than beasts when survival was on the line.

Her survival came first. Everyone would have to protect themselves with Nathaniel being the only one the rule didn’t apply to. He was her one exception.

Aymara climbed onto the bed and carefully lay beside him. She kept enough distance not to disturb his sleep, but her eyes remained fixed on his peaceful face.

For years, she had somehow managed to stay away from him. She had allowed Dylan to dictate who she could speak to, where she could go, what she could wear, and even which people she was allowed to keep in her life.

Sometimes Aymara wondered if Dylan had cast some kind of spell over her.

How else could she have stayed away from Nathaniel for six whole years? How could she have forgotten someone who had once been so important to her?

Her heart ached. "Was I really that stupid?"

Nathaniel’s breathing remained slow and steady. Aymara turned slightly toward him.

"No," she denied, her voice was barely above a whisper. "I wasn’t stupid."

Her fingers carefully reached across the space between them and rested against his hand.

"I was just blinded by what I believed was love," she closed her eyes. "But not anymore."

Aymara had lost her parents when she was young. After their deaths, she was raised by her grandmother who became her home, her family, and the one person who made the enormous Ellington mansion feel less empty but even that didn’t last forever.

Her grandmother died shortly after Aymara turned eighteen. From then on, Aymara’s life became a string of funerals.

One relative after another passed away until there was no one left on either her mother’s or father’s side of the family.

No distant uncle waiting to take her in, no aunt calling to check on her and no cousins gathering around her during holidays.

Eventually, there was only Aymara. She was the last person carrying the Ellington name. And through every funeral, every grieving period, and every lonely night that followed, Nathaniel had been there for her.

He was always beside her.

At every funeral, his hand would find hers and remain there for as long as she needed it. When she cried, he never told her to stop. When she couldn’t speak, he simply sat beside her in silence. When everyone else eventually went home, Nathaniel stayed behind.

He would spend every waking hour making sure she had eaten, reminding her to rest, bringing her water, and quietly checking whether she was holding herself together.

He never demanded anything from her. He simply stayed and did his part to ease her pain and burdens.

For years, Nathaniel’s presence became intertwined with Aymara’s life so naturally that she stopped noticing it.

Through loses and achievements, he was always either the first to hold her hand and offer a shoulder for her to lean on or be the first to congratulate her and show how proud he was of her.

He was there when she woke up, when she was sad, during celebrations and disasters, during ordinary afternoons and the worst days of her life.

His presence became as familiar as breathing and perhaps that had been the problem.

Aymara had grown so accustomed to having Nathaniel beside her that she had stopped recognizing his presence as something precious.

She never thought about what her life would look like without him. She simply assumed he would always be there.

Always waiting for her, reaching for her hand and coming back when they fought until she was the one who pushed him away.

Only after losing him did Aymara understand the cruel truth; Nathaniel had never been an insignificant part of her life. He had been woven into nearly every Chapter of it.

She had simply been too accustomed to his love to realize how much of her life had been held together by it.

So when Dylan came into her life, he felt like a breath of fresh air.

After years of the same familiar routine, the same quiet companionship, and the same person always standing beside her, Dylan was something new.

He was exciting, different and he made her feel emotions she had never associated with Nathaniel’s steady presence.

Dylan showered her with attention, pursued her relentlessly, and made her feel as though she had finally found something she had been missing and Aymara fell for him. Hard.

She opened the door to her world and allowed Dylan into the space she had once shared almost entirely with Nathaniel. She thought she was filling a void in her heart, never realizing that the void had never truly been empty.

It had already been filled to the brim because Nathaniel had filled it years ago. She simply hadn’t noticed because it came free without conditions.

His love had been so constant that she had mistaken it for something ordinary. His care had become so familiar that she stopped appreciating it. His presence had become so deeply woven into her life that she no longer understood just how much of herself had been built around him.

Dylan, however, didn’t make her whole. He slowly emptied her. Little by little, he drained away the love, confidence, self-respect, and sense of identity that Nathaniel had spent years nurturing in her.

The girl who had once known what she wanted began asking Dylan for permission for everything. The woman who had once made her own decisions began changing herself to keep him happy.

The person who had once been surrounded by unconditional love began believing she had to earn affection by becoming someone else.

By the time Aymara realized what had happened, she had given Dylan pieces of herself that Nathaniel had spent years helping her build.

And for what? For something that had looked beautiful simply because it was new.

Aymara had learned that lesson the hardest way possible. Fresh didn’t mean it was safe.

Something could be new, exciting, and intoxicating while still being poisonous. And just because someone was always there didn’t mean they should be taken for granted.

Sometimes, the person who felt ordinary was the one who had been loving you extraordinarily all along.

Nathaniel had been there through every funeral, every lonely night, every heartbreak, and every moment when Aymara had needed someone to hold her together. She had mistaken his constancy for something guaranteed.

Now she knew better. Being familiar didn’t make someone less valuable and being new didn’t make someone better. Dylan was proof, she gave him all of her and it didn’t stop him from cheating on her and killing her.

"It’s funny isn’t it... You gave me your all and I chose someone else without a second thought and the one I chose... did the same thing to me," she confessed.

Saying that out loud made her feel selfish because it felt like Nathaniel was her backup, the one she picked because Dylan disappointed her.

"You’re not my backup," she quickly explained but that only felt worse. "...I’ll do everything in my power to earn your forgiveness. I’ll rebuild our world, the place that always held just the two of us. I promise that I won’t waste this second chance at us," her fingers coiled around his.

She turned toward Nathaniel and gently brushed his hair away from his forehead.

"This time, no one is going to come between us," her voice was barely a whisper. A faint smile touched her lips. "Even if the entire world comes knocking at my door for you..."

Her fingers tightened gently around his. "...they’ll have to get through me first."

Outside, a distant rumble of thunder rolled across the ocean.