“I regret letting you think I didn’t want to get married.”
“Did you, though?”
“Yes.”
“What about waiting?”
“That’s the thing. I wanted that, too. And now I know that I can’t have it both ways.” I suck in a quick breath. “This is so hard.”
“It’s probably harder because it’s also your favourite time of year.”
It’s probably too self-pitying to tell him that it’s been agonizingly hard every single day since he left.
Yeah, that’s too much.
So I just nod.
He rubs his face into my hair. “New Year’s resolution to let go of regret?”
“Yeah. No more what-ifs about an apple orchard wedding.”
“That’s fucking specific.”
I shrug. “Doesn’t matter now. Plus being specific helps let it go, maybe?”
“Sure. I can buy that.” He makes a humming, thinking sound. “Okay, I regret not kissing you during our hookups.”
“What?” This time, he lets me twist around. I nearly fall off the couch, but he catches me and pulls me back against him once I’ve turned over. “Where is that coming from?”
“Every time you summoned me?—”
“I didn’t summon you!”
His eyes crinkle at my protest. “Potato potahtoh.”
“Youoffered.”
“Still. Either way, I felt like I shouldn’t kiss you. That wasn’t what we did anymore.” His jaw moves, then his throat bobs up and down. I’m close enough to catalogue every little part of his visceral reactions to his own confession. “But when this is over, if I’m going to do a postmortem on it, that’ll be my biggest regret. Not kissing you more when I knew that every time might be our last time. I didn’t make it the most it could be, and I regret holding back.”
How am I supposed to respond to that?
“I thought the same thing, you know,” I whisper. “That every time might be our last. It actually haunted me that I couldn’t remember our last time before…you know.”
“The summoning?”
“The offering.”
“Mmm.” His brow furrows. “I think it was in the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, probably.” I swallow and focus my eyes on his mouth.
We stare at each other, a warm tangle of limbs and regret. In the narrow space between us, my heart hammers in a wild, irregular rhythm. His confession has done something funny to the self-preservation I’ve held onto for too long. It’s as if he’s shared a new piece of his heart, raw and unadulterated. Regret feels like too shallow a word for what is tightening in my chest, sharp at the edges and brittle all the way through.
I might shatter.
But his emerald-flecked gaze is steady.
I breathe through the pound of my pulse as his gaze anchors me. And I tighten my fingers into the front of his soft t-shirt.
