"Tell him I'm sick."

I laid in my room, talking to my mother through the door as she asked what was wrong, and told me that Lincoln Carter was standing at my door, wondering where I was. I tossed and turned on my bed, not having slept the night before and not planning on sleeping the next night either.

I heard my mother walking away, downstairs to relay the bad news to Lincoln, and I got up to double-check the lock on my window. It was secure, ensuring that he couldn't get in even if he wanted to. There was nothing stopping me from staying in my room for as long as I pleased, curtains drawn, window closed, lights off, ignoring the world.

Patrick had been right. I was being thoughtless by allowing myself to become enamored with Lincoln once again, I had been stupid and idiotic and lovesick. There was nothing there for me, no future, no worth, no...relationship. There was nothing but heartache, so why in the world would I subject myself to that once again? It had taken me three years to get over him the first time. I couldn't go through that again. Making the relationship official would mean that we were able to have a future, a life, perhaps more.

I couldn't have that. Not with Lincoln.

I laid in my bed, ignoring everyone, ignoring the knock on my window that came three minutes after I sent my mother away, ignoring the faint call of my name from the other side of the glass. He knocked three times, waiting by the window for ten minutes, before the faint scratching of his dress pants against the wooden board could be heard again, heading back towards his own room, his own house, his own life.

A life that I would never be able to share.

I had been ignorant for thinking that I could. That I would be able to keep this lie going for who knew how long, ignoring the fact that Lincoln was someone with a heart, with a mind, with a life. Someone who was capable of feeling hurt and wounded, someone who was capable of forgetting a girl like me had ever existed, and then getting hurt by her all over again, just a few years later.

I ignored the ringing of my phone in the next fifteen minutes, varying from the faint ping of a text message to the incessant ringing of a phone call, to the beeping of a FaceTime attempt. There were three missed phone calls in the next twenty minutes, four missed FaceTime calls, and eight new text messages from him within the hour.

He didn't stop.

The next two weeks of my life remained the same. I stayed in my bedroom, locked away from anything and everything that could possibly make me happy, refusing to speak to anyone but my mother when she brought food up to my room three times a day. I stayed in my room when I heard the doorbell ring and Patrick or Emma asking my mother if I was well again. She would turn them away every time, and I never quite got around to thanking her for it.

I ate three meals a day and slept for the rest of it, ignoring all happenings on my phone, on the TV, in my life. There was nothing there for me, nothing of interest, nothing of importance, nothing of value. I wanted Lincoln. I wanted to be able to kiss him and hold him and be with him. But I couldn't. I couldn't because it would lead to a heartache more severe than this one, and more severe than the one from three years prior.

I couldn't go back.

He called. He FaceTimed. He texted. Multiple times a day, every day, until exactly fourteen days after I had blown him off.

That day, there was nothing. Not a call, not a video chat attempt, not a single text message. There was nothing. Lincoln had disappeared from my phone.

It was strange, going from ignoring the sounds of my phone to not having anything to ignore at all. It was rather refreshing in a way, and I left my room for the first time in two weeks to eat a meal with my family. I showered for longer than five minutes, took a bubble bath, and brushed my teeth twice instead of once in the middle of the afternoon, as I had been for the past few months. I was undeserving of general hygeine, of anything that a regular, non-patological-liar would be worthy of.

I retired back to my room that night, still ignoring the phone on my desk, which had been void of sounds all day. I opened the window and the curtains for the first time, letting the cool air blow into my room and air out the smell of two weeks worth of an unkempt teenage girl.

I turned off my light and snuggled into my bed, comfortable with the window open. There was no way that Lincoln would come across the board into my room, not after two weeks of being ignored and generally, to him, forgotten. He wouldn't have the nerve, or the stomach. I knew him. I knew him too well.

He wouldn't come over. He would respect what I wanted, and he would listen to the unspoken message I was sending him: I didn't care.

I turned over in my bed, prepared to have the first full night of sleep in two weeks. The silence from Lincoln on my phone had done something to me: it had showed me that life went on without him, just as it had for three years before he had come swooping back in to ruin my life.

Just as I was drifting off, I could hear a voice talking. It was faint, not incredibly audible, but it was a voice I recoginzed, drifting in through the open window.

"Olivia. Listen."

Lincoln.

A/N: Here we go! I'm so excited to write the next chapter holy crap.

Also, if I screw up and say "Logan" at some point, know that it means Lincoln. I've been binge watching Gilmore Girls and Logan Huntzberger is a beautiful person who I may end up writing the name of instead of Lincoln. It's a mistake, I apologize in advance.

Remember to follow @kpwattpad on Instagram! What do you think Lincoln is going to say? Is he going to be angry? Let me know!

-Katherine