“I know you don’t. So I don’t want…” He pauses as his voice grows tight, and I swear he’s bottling up the emotions he should let out. I wish he’d just say that this fucking sucks. It’s terrible. We clearly love each other, but he won’t stay. He won’t be what I want. So he’s going to tell me to give my heart to someone else instead, and it hurts worse than anything I’ve ever felt.
“I don’t want you waiting for me, Colin.”
“But I’m yours,” I reply. I’ve given up on not sounding pathetic. I am pathetic. I’m a sobbing, heartbroken mess.
“You’re goddamn right you are, but you should get touched and kissed more than one time a year.”
“I don’t give a fuck about that,” I cry.
He takes my face and holds me by the chin, forcing me to look at him. Then he wipes my cheeks with his thumbs and kisses each one. He doesn’t speak, but at this point, I don’t want him to. Every word out of his mouth hurts, no matter how true I know they are.
I can’t wait for Declan.
I can’t fabricate something out of nothing.
I have to live my life, and put myself out there and experience what other relationships feel like. That was the point of movinginto that residence hall in the first place. I wanted to experience real life, but I hid under his wing instead.
Now, I need to move on. Make mistakes. Fuck up. Fall in love. Have my heart broken.
Declan holds me while I cry, letting me bury my face in his neck as I do. His grip is so tight and so comforting because, at the end of the day, he is my friend, and this is what friends do.
That night, after we get home from the drive, Declan takes his time with me. He strips off my clothes and kisses every square inch of my body before fucking me slowly. We’re lying on our sides, his arms wrapped around my waist from behind so he can hold me as close as physically possible as he drives himself inside me.
After we’ve both climaxed, he removes the condom and cleans me up before taking me back in his arms and holding me as I start to drift off to sleep.
“I’ll see you next summer, won’t I?” I ask.
“Every summer, Colin. That’s a promise. Every bloody summer.”
It’s enough to ease my worries, because Declan doesn’t break his promises. And with that, I finally let the dreams take me, and I fall asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Declan
Three days until the wedding
I wake to the sound of rain on the window. The moment my eyes open, I look over at the chaise lounge to find it empty. I shouldn’t be disappointed by that. Did I expect him to stick around? Have breakfast with me?
He’ll be back in that seat tonight, so I can paint him some more. Is it so wrong that I’ve missed him? He’s my friend. At one point, he was more.
With a groan, I rub my forehead.God, I need to get out of my head.
My phone buzzes relentlessly from the floor next to my bed, where it must have fallen last night. When I pick it up, it’s riddled with notifications.
Anna warned me about today. Apparently, up until three days before the wedding, everything goes smoothly and seems like it will be fine, but it’s the three-day mark at which everything seems to crumble. It takes me fifteen minutes to go through all the messages on my phone.
Due to a sudden summer deluge, there seems to be a roseshortage. The baker in charge of the wedding cake suddenly came down with the summer flu, and Pierce’s best man’s suit came back from the dry cleaners missing a pair of pants.
I have my work cut out for me today.
I take a quick shower, get dressed, and prepare for all the fires that need to be put out to make this goddamn wedding go off without a hitch. The wedding I’m not sure should happen in the first place. But oh well. That part is not up to me.
When I reach the main part of the house, I find it abustle with frantic energy. The staff is running around in a mad rush, and Blaire finds me in the hallway with a bucket of sopping-wet drapery in her arms.
“Freak storm. Came out nowhere,” she says with a roll of her eyes.
“It’s Scotland,” I reply with a laugh.
