Jay lifts his head from my shoulder to look at me, his dark eyes searching my face. "It doesn't feel weird to me either. It feels right. Like this is what we were always supposed to be."
"It's like I blinked and we grew up, but we're still the same people on the inside. You're still the person who means everything to me. When I look at you, that's who I see. Not years of missing time. Not all the things we went through separately. Just you. The same you I've always known."
"I feel the same way. Like no time passed at all. Like we just picked up where we left off, but with bigger bodies and different needs."
"Except now we're doing a lot more than hiding in a barn and sharing body heat."
He laughs, a surprised huff of air that stirs my hair. "Yeah. Except for that. This is significantly better than a hay barn."
I pull him back down, tucking his head under my chin, wrapping my arms around him.
"I don't want tomorrow to come," he says quietly.
"Me neither."
"Can we just stay here forever? In this room? Never leave? Just exist in this bubble where nothing else matters?"
I wish I could say yes. I wish I could promise him that we never have to face the real world, that it can always be like this—just us together. No jobs, no distance, no problems to solve.
But I can't.
Tomorrow is coming whether we want it to or not. The real world is waiting.
"We'll figure it out," I say instead, because it's all I can promise. "We always do. We survived worse than this."
He doesn't answer. He just holds me tighter, his arms wrapping around me like he's trying to absorb me into his skin, and I hold him back just as hard. And we don't talk about tomorrow.
Not yet.
We're not ready yet.
Chapter 34: Jay
I wake up with my heart already racing, pounding so hard it feels like it might break through my ribs. It's not the good kind of racing. Not the kind from last night, from Ivan's hands on me and his mouth against my ear and the desperate way we came together.
This is the bad kind. The anxiety kind. The kind that feels like something terrible is about to happen even though logically, rationally, nothing is wrong.
It's Sunday.
Ivan leaves today. In a few hours, he'll get in his truck and drive away and I'll be alone again.
I lie perfectly still, trying to control my breathing, trying to calm my heart through sheer force of will. It doesn't work. It never works. The dread is sitting on my chest like someone's pressing down on my sternum, making it hard to breathe. I know I'm being irrational. I know he's coming back next weekend. I know we have a plan, calls every night at nine, texts during the day, a schedule we worked out together.
But my body doesn't care about logic. My body is convinced that the moment he walks out that door, everything is going to fall apart. He's going to realize how broken I am. He's going to meet someone better. He's going to decide this isn't worth the drive, the effort, the complications.
Ivan stirs beside me, his arm tightening around my waist in his sleep. "You're awake," he mumbles, still half-asleep.
"Yeah, I'm always awake."
"What time is it?" He doesn't open his eyes, just burrows his face deeper into my shoulder.
I check my phone on the nightstand, squinting at the brightness. "Almost eight. You don't have to be up yet. Go back to sleep."
He groans softly and buries his face in my shoulder, breathing in deeply. "Too early. Way too early."
"Go back to sleep then. You need rest for the drive."
"Can't." He lifts his head finally, blinking at me in the dim morning light. "You're tense. Your whole body is stiff, not in a good way. What's wrong? What happened?"
