To Hell And Back: (On-Hold) by Chloe Knox (phonics reader txt) 📕

and quickly averted my eyes from Ulrich’s feeling so unbelievably uncomfortable, way more than I thought I’d ever feel around him. More uncomfortable then I even was when I saw him watching me as I undressed. I twisted my finger around the slightly damp blade of grass and pulled, finding something to preoccupy my shaking hands, “Ulrich…you’re my best friend—“

“And you’re mine.”

“—but I’m not quite sure what I feel.”

Ulrich spoke softly and gently, but his eyes were dark and a bit hurt, “Don’t try and skip around it, Sarah. You either do like me like…like I like you, or you don’t. It’s one or the other, there’s no in between.”

I couldn’t hold back the tears, as I shut my eyes trying to focus on my heart. I honestly, truly, didn’t know how I felt. And even if I did like Ulrich, I don’t think I’d even know it. Ulrich thinks I’m just an everyday commoner, but I’m not. I haven’t grown up in the same surrounding with the same people as him. My life is easy and I rarely ever have to do anything for myself, unlike Ulrich who works every second of everyday, just to keep his and his father’s house in shape so they don’t end up sleeping on the streets. I’ve never been around boys, other than my father and cousins, and older brother, and I do love them, but not in the way that Ulrich is talking about. I don’t have much experience with even tying my own corset, which is why changing in Ulrich’s mother’s bedroom had been such a challenge. I didn’t want to explain to him why I didn’t understand his feelings, which would mean sharing a secret. That would mean confessing to him that every time I’d seen him, I’d lied, and I’d lose him. I’d lose my best friend.

“I honestly don’t know. I’m just so confused about everything.”

“It’s a simple question, Sarah. You don’t have to even think to answer it, just listen to your body, your heart. What is it telling you?”

“My body? How do you listen to your body?” I asked, with a roll of the eyes, whipping away my tears before Ulrich noticed them.

“Just remember, remember how you react to things.”

I rolled my eyes, this time out of frustration instead of amusement, “That’s the problem, I don’t know how to. I don’t even understand half the things you’re saying right now.”

“Every day for the past seven years, I’ve sat here, at this very spot, waiting for you, hoping you’d show up. And when you didn’t, I’d go the rest of the night with a hole in my heart. The rest of the day would be boring, gloomy, overwhelmed with blackness and depression. When younger, I’d cry for hours because you didn’t show up. As I grew older I’d bottle all my feelings and wonder if you were okay, what you were doing. All day and night, I’d worry and miss you. When you’re gone I can’t eat, sleep, or even think a single train of thought that’s not interrupted by the image of you…and when you showed up today…everything changed. Your smile brightens my day. Your laugh and pure clumsiness amuses me on the worst of days. A single touch of your skin, a brush of your fingers holding my hand,” Ulrich whispered, lightly grazing his fingertips over my collar bone and neck, making my cheeks warm and turn red, “makes my skin grow hot, and my body tingle with need.”

I took in everything he said, making sure I understood every detail of his misery and joy, which I apparently seemed to have caused him. I looked into his dark brown eyes and let out slow breaths as his fingers traveled up to my cheek. He continued to talk, but I barely heard the rest. I was too focused on my surroundings.

The tension between has had seemed to get thicker, the moment he touched me. His eyes were getting darker and darker, as he spoke with an overwhelming emotion that, like he described, made my whole body radiate heat. My fingers and toes tingled with such electricity that made my body ache and shiver to its very core.

It amazed me how well he was describing what I once had, and do, feel. All those years that I had promised to see him, and couldn’t, I’d felt guilty and upset. I had so badly wanted to see my friend, to know how he was doing, and how his life in general was. I was looking forward to seeing his smile, hearing his laugh, and being able to be my complete self. He excepted me. He’d seen me at my worst and best. Sometimes it even seemed he knew me better then my own father, and I was with him almost twenty-four-seven. Today was the first day in seven, maybe even eight years I’d seen Ulrich.

And only now, did listening to his cracking voice and looking into his truthfully compassionate soul through his eyes did I realize how much I had missed him over that long period of time. Only now did I realize what my heart was trying to tell me when Ulrich would smile and it would pound against my chest. Only now did I realize why my stomach would flip, and why my knees would buckle when Ulrich would hold my hand or say the right thing.

Could this really be happening, and true? Was I just being naïve and gullible, like my father said all teenage girls were? Or had I truly found someone who loved me and that I loved back. Just this morning the thought of loving or even liking Ulrich in this way hadn’t even crossed my mind! Is it even possible for me to have been so oblivious to my own feelings through all these years? Or was my body tricking me into believing something that was never meant to be or even true?

His lips brushed against mine, knocking me out of my trance of thought. I hadn’t even realized how close he was getting, hadn’t even realized when he was right in front of me.

My heart was pounding, blood rushing through my body, at such a quick pace as the electricity from my smaller appendages was. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins, warming my insides, fogging my thoughts. Everything up there was now completely blank. All I could think of, more like focus on was Ulrich. How weird—but in a good way—he’d always made me feel, how he now made me feel. And all I had to do, to forever hold him, to forever have him, was lean forward and return the kiss he was about to give.


~4~

Ulrich's P.O.V.

But she didn’t. She didn’t kiss me back, like for that moment I thought she was going to. She had closed her eyes and a barely audible moan had even escaped her lips, but she didn’t kiss me when I leaned in trying to close the last inch of space between us. Instead, she pulled back, and then quickly slid from out of my grasp and stood.

“Sarah? Sarah, I’m sorry.” I mumbled, and in all reality I wasn’t. At least not for what I was just about to do. I was sorry for her, about how overwhelmed and confused she said she had felt. I’m sure after all these years of holding it in, me just one day blabbing it out was a pretty big shock…but there was no way this thing we had was one sided.

Without saying one word, she took off, sprinting through the forest away from me.

“Sarah? Wait!” I yelled after her, quickly stumbling to my feet to follow her through the forest…if she didn’t like me back that was okay. I wouldn’t want her to admit feelings to me that weren’t true. I wouldn’t want to be strung along, so if she truly didn’t share the same feelings for me as I did her and that was okay. But that didn’t mean I was okay with completely losing her. I didn’t want to lose my friend.

A few minutes later I stopped running when Sarah, too, had stopped. She was sitting in the middle of a big pool of water. It was a lake, surrounded by open forest and lush green grass that seemed colorful lively even in the dark night.

I looked down at my feet and saw Sarah’s dress and under armor lying on the bank of rocks and mud by my feet.

Quickly, I tore my eyes away from the site and swallowed the thick lump that had formed in the back of my throat.

Sarah was good distance away, but I could still see her clear as day when she lifted her hand, and curled her pointer in a gesture calling me toward her.


Sarah's P.O.V.

Ulrich was purposely—maybe unconsciously—torturing me. Either way, watching him strip out of his shirt, then his breeches, to join me in the cool waters of Crescent Lake, took forever. And once he was finally in front of me, towering over me, waters at his waist, what I had so badly wanted to do just minutes ago seemed horrifyingly scary.

But I pushed myself to go through with it.

Slowly, I slid off my knees, and stood revealing myself as I stood to look up at Ulrich. He looked over my petite body, eyes stopping at were the waters too stopped at my hips, just below my navel.

His eyes quickly snapped to mine, looking hesitantly but desperate.

He wrapped one arm around me, pulling me against him by the small of my back, and more words slipped out, “I really shouldn’t be doing this.”

“What?”

“I just…I wasn’t brought up this way; I’m not supposed to be doing this. I’m supposed to be pure for the day I marry my husband. I want to, but this…it just doesn’t feel right.”

“I agree.”

“Yeah?”

“Marry me?”

He said it quickly, sounding only the slightest bit nervous. I was shocked, though I guess I should have seen it coming, “What?”

“Will you marry me?”

“I…I can’t just marry you.”

“Why not? You love me don’t you?” he asked, caressing my cheeks.

Only moments ago I hadn’t been sure, now I was, yet I wasn’t sure if I could say it. It took a moment of hesitation, but eventually I was able to, “Y-Yes, but—“

“But what? If I love you, and you love me, what’s so wrong with marriage?”

The law, I thought. If only he knew who I really was. Me and him, it wasn’t possible. It’d never work, it wasn’t aloud, “I just…I don’t know.”

“Sarah?” Ulrich whispered as he looked into my eyes, “I’m not going to force this on you. If you don’t want