“That’s not true,” I said. “I was there. I—”
“Emery, look…” Xander shoved his fingers through his hair, frustrated. “We got caught up in a moment when we were ten years old and romanticized it. We made it into something it’s not.”
His words hit me straight in the heart like a hammer. “Is that what we did?”
“Yes. So now we have all this…built-up expectation, maybe, when the fact is, we were just kids.”
“That is thefact. But the feelings? They all meant nothing?”
“Not nothing,” Xander said in a pained whisper. “They just can’t mean everything.”
I stared, willing back tears. A desperate, panicky feeling lit me up from the inside, because the best thing in my airless, closed-up life was slipping away.
He read the despair on my face and shook his head. “Fuck, Emery, I’m so sorry, but—”
“For what, Xander? You’ve figured it all out with your facts and logic and equations—”
“That’s right because I have to keep you safe,” he said, his voice rising now. “And me too. I told myself I would never get into this situation—”
“Oh, I see,” I shot back. “I’m asituation.”
“No, you don’t see—”
“But you can hold me like that and nearly kiss me—”
“I refuse to lose one more person I love!” Xander shouted, then froze, his eyes wide. “Never mind. Forget it.”
Too late. A sudden feeling of warmth and shock flooded me, making me stumble back. My heart felt full and on the verge of shattering, both at the same time.
“Don’t you think I know how impossible it is?” I whispered. “I do. And I’m scared too, but—”
“There is no ‘but,’ Emery,” Xander said. “There are no exceptions to the rule. I am going to MIT. I am going to finish what my father started. And you have to go to California. You have to follow your dreams and get as far away from that psychopath as you can.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t…besomething to each other. Even far apart.”
“How?” he demanded. “People leave, Emery. And they don’t come back, even when they say they will.”
“It wouldn’t be like that, I promise…”
The word made him wince. “I’ve heard that before.”
His cold tone hurt; he sounded like my dad. Tears threatened. “So that’s it then? There’s nothing else to talk about?”
“I said everything I wanted to say in those letters, and you never answered me back—”
“I never got the letters!” I cried, fresh tears spilling over.
“I’m not saying it’s your fault. I’m saying, I have…limits.” Heshook his head, hands on his hips. “I lost my mom, and I’m losing my dad now too. Slowly, but it’s happening.” Xander’s handsome face was etched with so much pain, his voice heavy with it. “I shouldn’t be kissing you, Emery. I should be trying to save you.”
“Save me?”
“Yes. To keep that light of yours from going out. I don’t want to hurt you. The last thing on this fucking planet I want to do is hurt you. But it will only get worse. For both of us.”
I heard his unspoken words, an echo of what he’d said the other night about love. Because he’d been hurt so badly before. His heart broken by his mother who should have loved him forever and instead taught him that love had limits.
“Okay,” I whispered. “If that’s what you want.”
He met my eyes head on. “That’s what I want.”
