I blink, my mouth parting, words melting away on my tongue and fading from my brain. “Do you mean…right now?”
“No,” he sighs, his voice low and raspy—pained. “Maybe?”
“Right now,” I say, “no.”
Rowan swallows audibly—out of relief or stress, I can’t tell. “And every other moment?”
“Don’t ask me that,” I whisper.
“Why not?” Rowan whispers, the rasp in his question cuts my heart.
I swallow back whatever emotion he stirs inside of me.Whatever happy, loving emotion that has turned me inside out since being with him like this. Since realizing I might not just have a crush orlikehim.
For him, my heart swells in my chest. A firework goes off. My brain malfunctions. My fingers itch to reach for him.
He has taken my once steady, calm heart and turned it into a loudly beating orchestra that plays to the tune of his name.
“Because the answer isn’t always no.”
It takes a moment, but then suddenly my skin is melting into his, becoming one. He holds me tight enough to make me feel like I can’t breathe but it’s wonderful to not be breathing with him.
My finger reaches out, the tip skimming across the smooth skin of his supple lips. He kisses my fingertip.
“Your green matches my purple,” I whisper, still tracing his lips.My lips. Mine.
“And Binx?”
I chortle. “She’s the black in the color scheme, obviously.”
He grins.
“Did you talk to your dad and brother today?”
“A bit,” he murmurs. “I called earlier. They said they were making dinner and that I should visit soon—see Andrew’s campus and stuff.”
“Why don’t you?”
It takes him a moment to shrug, slowly, his face contorted with discomfort. “I feel like it’ll feel like I’m betraying something—I don’t know.”
I draw lazy patterns on his chest with my fingers, tracing invisible hearts. “Talk it out.”
Rowan sighs, pained. “I just don’t think I could ever leave this town—and not in a bad feeling-trapped kind of way. I loveit here. My mom is here, Nat. I don’t want to lose that, especially during the holidays and?—”
“Hey, you won’t.” I scoot closer, skin flush against skin, and my palm rests on his stubbled cheek. “I don’t want to leave this town either. It’s perfect, honestly. But, even if we did, your mom would go wherever you go, you know that.”
“But the cemetery…”
I inhale sharply, exhale slowly. “Don’t hate me for this, but it’s just a grave. It’s just a rock in the ground. That isn’t her.Youare her. Your brother is her. Your dad is her. She lives everywhere; she doesn’t live there.”
Rowan sniffs, his tongue poking at his cheek before he rasps, hoarsely, “I know you’re right, I just?—”
“It’s okay,” I coo in a whisper and press a kiss to his cheek.
“I try, you know,” he croaks. “I try to keep my relationship with Andrew strong, and I try to check in with my dad. But it’s like once they left they never looked back.”
I frown, my throat going tight and dry as my lip quivers.
“Sometimes it’s just likeI’mthe one frozen in time, but they moved on,” he says and my thumb wipes the tear at the corner of his bright, sky-blue eyes.
