“What?” Hailey pushes off my lap to an upright position.
I can’t tell if she’sgoodshocked orbadshocked by my suggestion, so I continue.
“Yeah, we could leave in the morning. Be there by noon tomorrow and come back tomorrow night.”
“Reed, you can’t be serious!”
Badshocked I see, but I still smirk at her. “I thought you liked my spontaneity.” The last time she said that we were tangled up in a barn. A moment that seems infinitely lighter than this one.
“I do,” she says, gripping my hands. “I really do, but I also like what an incredible friend you are. What about Dean? We can’t just leave. And my dad… he won’t say it, but he’s a mess. He needs me.”
People never tell me the truth. Instead, they skirt around all of the reasons why they don’t want to go along with my plan instead of just coming out and saying what they’re reallythinking. That if I don’t take life more seriously I’ll wind up alone.
But I tried that. I made up this vision in my head over the summer. It started out as more of a mirage of what Hailey and I could be, but then it morphed into this real idea that went beyond a few months. I saw us traveling the world together, seeing a sunrise in every city. I saw a future. But what I failed to consider was the fact that she’d left McCall once already. And for her, this summer was about making amends. It was about never leaving again.
“Yeah, no, you’re right. He does need you,” I say, trying my best to hang on to her fingertips when the idea of us feels like quicksand.
A look of fear drifts across her face, and she pulls the strings of my hoodie.
“And I needyou,” she says.
Isn’t that what I wanted? Someone to finally choose me? But the terrifying, selfish truth is that I wanted her to chooseonlyme. I’ll forever have to share Hailey Hart with her father, her best friend, and anyone else who comes into her life. She keeps the people she loves close; she doesn’t run from them like I do.
“We never talked about it,” she says, her eyes shifting back to the fire.
“Talked about what?” I ask.
“What you’d do at the end of the season.”
Not whatwewould do, butyou. That “you” stands out like a broken bone.
“Yeah, I guess we didn’t,” I say.
She holds my gaze and sweeps her thumb across my bottom lip. “Let’s just wait. See what tomorrow brings.”
“Okay,” I say. Because I’m afraid if we say anything else to each other, it will end in goodbye, and out of everything that might come next, what I want isher.
I reach over and draw her onto my lap. She smells like a candle, and I’m lost the moment I’m caught in her intoxicating flame.
My eyes snag on the single freckle that dots her cheekbone beneath her right eye. I brush my thumb across it, in awe of how beautiful this woman is, and wonder why she chose me. I study every crease, every hint of pink that spreads across her cheeks and lips. I want to memorize how it feels to have her in my arms, terrified this’ll be the very last time.
My palms drift to her backside and inch beneath her shirt. Her skin shudders under my fingertips as they lift higher and higher. I’m met with nothing but bare skin.
“Still driving me crazy, I see.”
A fractured giggle escapes her lips. “You said you liked it when it was off.”
I let my fingers explore. “Oh, I do.”
She draws closer by the underside of my biceps, and we stay there for a long time, lost in each other’s eyes.
I don’t know how to face what comes next,mine silently tell her.
I don’t either, hers war back.
When our staring contest threatens to tip into tears, I want to run. I can’t cry right now. The only ability I have left in me is to lay her down on this quilt. I can’t think about the idea of Dean in the hospital or the thought of us losing him. But I canfeel. I’d start with a kiss if I wasn’t so lost in my head right now. I sigh and touch our foreheads together.
“You’re the only place in the world I want to be,” she says, and it stops me in my tracks. I marvel at how she always says exactly what I need to hear. If she can do that for me, I can be vulnerable too.
