“Look at me.”
He does, but his gaze quickly flicks down to my jaw. I know there’s already a bruise forming, but I doubt he can see it through my beard. Unfortunately, just knowing it’s there is apparently enough.
“I meant what I told your father.” I tilt my head to catch his eyes with mine. “I’d take a lot worse for you, Jackson. This? It’s nothing compared to what I’d endure for you.”
When his eyes get a bit glassy, I have a feeling it doesn’t have anything to do with the cold.
“Can we go home?”
There’s something in the way he sayshomethat lights me up inside.
Still…after everything that he’s gone through tonight, I don’t want to make assumptions.
“Of course we can. I’m going to ask one of the officers if they could follow us back into town with your car so you don’t have to drive. I could give you a ride to your dad’s if you want?”
For once, I’m notafraidthat’s what he might want.
Jackson trusted me to show up tonight because he wantedmyhelp. I hate that he felt he had to face it alone first, but I understand why he did.
The most important thing is that he didn’t run.
He stayed.
But then he frowns, looking at me with that crease between his brows again, his voice breaking when he asks, “I can’t stay with you?”
“Of course you can,” I say quickly. “I’d love nothing more than to take you home with me. I just want you to have what you need.”
“Right now, I needyou.”
For a second, I can’t breathe. Those five simple words feel too big to fit inside a body that’s so used to only ever holding scraps of affection.
“I need you, Isaac,” he says again. “I need you so fucking badly it hurts sometimes. But I don’t care how much it hurts. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not running away from it, not gonna letit scare me off. I want all of it. All of this. All ofyou. I’m staying because I…I love you.”
Something in my chest stutters, then cracks open. There’s this strange, trembling wonder spreading through me. Like stepping into sunlight after believing I was built for shadows.
I thought I had loved before, butthis?
For the first time, I understand why people write poetry about this. Why they ruin themselves for it.
Why they call it falling.
“I love you too, Jackson,” I say on a breath as I press my forehead to his. “More than I ever knew it was possible to love someone. And yet falling for you was the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
The smile he gives me is shaky but so fucking bright.
“Take me home?”
“Anything you need, sweetheart.”
After checking with the sheriff that we’re free to go and Jackson says good night to his father, I walk with him to my car. He gets into the passenger seat, and as I round the front of my car, I peer back one last time at the bridge.
Twenty years ago, it took so fucking much from me. My parents. My sister. In a way, my brother. The innocent version of myself who didn’t know what grief tasted like.
But not tonight.
Tonight, it didn’t take Jackson from me.
It didn’t carve another name into my bones.
