Chapter One

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Cole Alvarez was six years old the first time he got burnt. He insisted on being the one to light the candles of his best friend's birthday cake. He just wanted to make her smile. He didn't mind. It was a sting he could handle.

Cole was thirteen the second time he got burnt. He was trying to light the fire pit outside for Alli when she got cold. She wanted to look at the stars that night. He wanted to see her smile. He didn't mind. He could handle it.

Cole was eighteen the third time he got burnt. It was Alli. It was her lips finally against his. It was the stars burning so bright they couldn't help but explode. He burned. He burned. He burned. But he wanted to burn like this forever.

Cole burned for years. He was a light that could never get snuffed out. He burned with Alli. His Alli. He burned. He burned. He burned.

Cole was twenty-seven when he could feel the flames getting to be too much. It was forgotten vows. It was kisses for show. He was on fire. He burned. He burned. He burned. He wanted it to stop. It wasn't a sting he could handle anymore.

Cole was twenty-nine now. He knew not to play with fire anymore. He didn't let his hand hover over the flame anymore. He didn't dance the line of it being just a bit too much. He didn't burn like he was one with the stars. He didn't feel a warmth in his chest like the fire was part of him anymore.

He wouldn't burn like that again.

"How are things going this week?"

"Much better," Cole said defiantly before his wife could interject, making Allison scoff.

"If 'much better' is going days without speaking more than five words to each other, then we're basically perfect," Allison countered sarcastically, holding her hands out loosely as if presenting herself.

Emma offered a small smile, but Cole could feel the disappointment radiating off of her. He couldn't blame her either. They had been at this for eight sessions now, and had made no progress. She was a good therapist, Cole thought. She listened to them both and offered helpful advice. Some of it had worked, but then a million more issues had piled up. Eventually, they started to crumble under the weight of it. And they haven't found themselves able to build it back up.

It started slow. There wasn't any one thing that happened. Things just didn't feel like they used to. The little things that mattered to the both of them didn't matter as much anymore. The things that excited them before just didn't elicit that same reaction anymore. For a while, they tried to get that feeling back. But eventually, it got too hard to keep trying.

Maybe it was the day Cole didn't have time that Tuesday morning to make Allison the coffee he made her every day. Maybe it was the day Allison didn't greet him at the door from work as she did routinely. Maybe it was the anniversary that slipped both their minds with their busy schedules. Maybe it was when they both realized they couldn't remember the last time they were intimate with one another. Maybe it was when they stopped saying "I love you" to each other. Maybe it happened slowly, and then everything came crashing down.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe.

No one in their families knew they were in these sessions or even having problems at all. They couldn't bring themselves to tell anyone. They said it was because they didn't want to burden anyone. But both knew that was a lie. They both felt as though their families relied on the two of them. They were the ones who kept things together. Neither had said this, but neither were willing to tell their families what was happening because they had to be the ones to keep it together.

Ever since their father passed, Cole took it upon himself to take up a parental role to his siblings. He was the one to move both his siblings into college when their mother couldn't get out of her emergency shift at the hospital. He was the one to stop by his sister's apartment and stock it with food when he knew she was too busy with work. He was the one to always shovel his mother's driveway and make sure the salt was put down on the ice. Any detail that his dad would remember was now up to Cole.

Allison's situation was a bit different. Her parents had gotten divorced when she was in high school. They had both dated a bit since, but neither had seemed to find the one yet. Thought she never would admit it out loud, it seemed like Alli had something to prove almost. Alli wanted to prove to herself that love could last. Getting a divorce would go against that. Cole knew that what was going through her mind as she sat on the couch next to him currently.

"What would you recommend?" Cole asked weakly, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his thighs. "This... this isn't getting better."

She tilted her head at them, analyzing them in a way that made Cole want to fade away into the couch. "How have things been since what happened a few weeks ago?"

The two instantly shifted on the couch. Allison was the one to speak up, "I don't think either of us want to talk about that, okay?"

Emma held her hands up in surrender. She never said the words with exactly what happened, likely because she could see how uncomfortable it made the two of them. And if she couldn't see how it made them feel, one of them always vocalized their disdain with talking about it. They both knew they had to talk about it, but refusing to seemed like the easier option.

Cole cleared his throat. "Please... what do we do?"

Emma shrugged helplessly with a gentle smile. "I can't tell you what to do here. It's clear you both have a lot of love for each other, but it's okay if that love isn't enough anymore."

It felt like a punch to the stomach to hear those words.

Whenever Cole felt like he had nothing, he had his love for Allison. When he had nothing... he had Allison. Always his Alli. He couldn't fathom not having her. It had to be enough, because somedays it was all he had. That love had to be enough.

"I just... I feel like we've failed," Allison whispered out weakly, squeezing her hands together.

"You haven't failed," Emma assured her in a kind tone. "If you choose to do this, you doing this for yourselves. You get to put yourselves first."

"I just... hate the idea that something like what we had can just fade away," Allison insisted, staring at the therapist desperately.

"You two met when you were four years old. You were each other's best friends throughout your entire childhood and then were your first romantic relationship. You started dating in high school, and stayed together throughout college," Emma recited slowly, the two of them nodding as they followed along, waiting for her point. "You got married young. Neither of you have ever been with anybody else. You've never even taken a break. Your lives have been one in the same. It's natural to want to know who you are outside of that."

Cole thought about the truth behind her words. From the second Cole met Allison, even at such a young age, he knew he would do anything to make her happy. He didn't realize it was love at the time, but it always was. It almost felt like they happened in reverse. It only took seconds for him to fall in love with her, but it took years for him to fall out. Cole sat back in the couch, his arm resting loosely behind Alli. She leaned forward and he pretended not to notice.

"And... sometimes you find yourself just wanting different things." There it was. One of their biggest issues at the moment. Cole would never pressure Allison into anything she didn't want to do, but he did want to start to think about having a family. Allison didn't want that yet and wasn't open to the conversation. He understood, but something about the idea of waiting made his chest feel tight and his breathing pick up. Something about letting time pass didn't sit right with him.

They were always on the same page, until they weren't.

"There's no right way to go about marriage," Emma continued slowly, which Cole thought was very 'therapist-like' of her, as he liked to say. Don't get him wrong, Cole saw the benefit of therapy. But this just felt like going in circles. He knew she wouldn't tell them what to do, but sometimes he just wished she would. Because he had no idea what to do.

"Well, there's a wrong way, and it feels like this is it," Cole commented in a murmur. Neither of the two women in the room responded to that. It wasn't often they found their therapist at a loss for words, but maybe that was because she was running out of things to say to them.

Every week, Emma had them close the session with three things they loved about each other.

She didn't bother having them do that this week.

Maybe that was how Cole knew it was over.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

Hello everyone! Welcome to the final book of the "Just for" Series! I hope you all enjoyed the beginning of the book. I'm hoping to post the next chapters soon and maybe get a bit of consistent posting going on. But we'll see! See you soon :)


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