Because, despite how badly she wanted to hold onto Aspen forever, theywereon their way to the airport so she could catch her flight home. It was almost laughable how the only thing that gave her the strength to get on the plane to come to Colorado in the first place was the knowledge that it’d only be a few days until she returned to her beloved New York, because here she was, a few days later, trying to find the strength to do the opposite.
God, had it only been a few days? Intellectually, she knew it had, but it felt like years had passed since Aspen had entered her life.
She swallowed thickly and wiped away the tears that had been coursing silently down her cheeks from the moment they’d pulled out of the garage. Her stomach twisted and sank as, from the corner of the eye, she could see Aspen do the same.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Aspen croaked as she tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “If you keep looking at me like that, I swear I’m turning the car around and taking you home.”
Taking you home. Eve gritted her teeth, her heart cracking with a fresh fissure of anguish as it screamed at her to tell Aspen to do it. Instead, she choked out a strangled, “I’m sorry,” through a sob that felt like sandpaper in her throat.
Aspen’s chest lifted and fell with a deep, purposeful breath as she pulled to a stop at a red light. Her jaw flexed as she stared pointedly ahead at the signs for the airport, and she straightened her arms against the steering wheel as if physically resisting the urge to crank the wheel to the left and follow through on her threat that wasn’t a threat at all.
It was a plea.
A wish.
A prayer.
And for as much as Eve wanted to, it was one that she knew she couldn’t answer. Because for as much as she loathed the idea of saying goodbye to Aspen for even an hour, the rational part of her mind insisted that she needed to. They’d become so immediately enmeshed that it would do them both good to take some time to think about what they wanted. To see if, with a bit of distance and time to sit with their feelings about everything that had happened, this magical spell that’d enveloped them popped and fell away like water slipping through their fingers. It killed her and she hated it, but they owed it to themselves—and each other—to make sure this was what they really wanted before they dove headlong into intertwining their lives.
So instead of saying the words that she wished she could and that Aspen longed to hear, she just squeezed Aspen’s hand tighter and said nothing as the light turned green.
She’d suffered through plenty of uncomfortable car rides in her life, but all of them paled in comparison to sitting silently by as she acted as a willing accomplice in breaking her own heart.
The sniffling, teary silence became oppressively thicker as the airport came into view, as if the low-slung, log-styled building had wrapped a fist around each of their hearts and squeezed so painfully that neither of them could breathe.
And what made it a million-times worse than any panic attack was that it was of her own foolish doing. She knew that all it would take was one word from her for this pain would stop, but she instead closed her eyes and focused on her breaths.
Breathe in, two, three, four. Hold. Hold. You can do this. It’s just for now. It’s not for forever. Don’t break yet. She wants you, too. And out, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
She kept it up until she felt the car stop, unsure if it was a blessing or a curse that it worked this time when it hadn’t at her parents’ a few days ago, but when she blinked her eyes open, she felt marginally more in control. She was still a total wreck and wouldn’t have been able to stop crying if she’d wanted to, but she was also strangely comforted by the deep-seated ache in her chest that assured her that her feelings were valid and true. That, when all was said and done, this hurt would make their reunion all the sweeter.
“It’s just a few weeks,” Aspen muttered, her voice soft and shredded with the tears that had been coursing down her cheeks for the last few minutes as she pulled the key from the ignition.
“Just a few weeks,” Eve confirmed. While she’d been packing, Aspen had texted her friend Kyle about taking her charters for the weekend before she had to be in Los Angeles for her show, and when he’d said he could do it, Aspen had booked her a plane ticket on the spot.
“We can do this,” Aspen said, her voice cracking pitifully.
Eve nodded. With Aspen faltering, it was up to her to be strong and carry this weight, like Aspen had done for her all week. “We can do this,” she agreed resolutely. They could and they would, but when she looked into Aspen’s tear-streaked face, she nearly told her to start the car and drive them away from her. “Baby…”
Aspen sniffed and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I can’t just stop—”
Eve leaned across the center console and captured Aspen’s lips in a reassuring kiss. The hitched sob that caught in Aspen’s throat when their lips touched broke her heart. The kiss was beautiful in its chaste simplicity, and she caressed Aspen’s cheek with her thumb as she let the gentle weight of the connection soothe away some of Aspen’s anguish. The kiss eventually broke with a soft, wet sound as their lips clung together as if actively resisting being separated, and she nuzzled Aspen’s cheek as she whispered, “We will be okay.”
Aspen exhaled shakily. “I know.”
Eve touched her forehead to Aspen’s and stroked the backs of her fingers along her jaw. Her throat tightened at the way Aspen leaned into the touch, searching for comfort, and she sighed as she kissed her again. “We will be okay,” she repeated, willing Aspen to believe her.
“We will be okay,” Aspen echoed. She drew a long, slow breath in through her nose, and held it for an extended moment before letting it go in a quiet rush. When she blinked her eyes open, they were still swimming with tears, but there was a spark behind them that assured Eve that Aspen wasn’t just blindly reiterating what she said, but that she believed it, too. “I’m sorry,” she murmured as she wiped at her cheeks.
“Me too,” Eve whispered. She kissed the small, lopsided smile that slanted Aspen’s lips, and hummed softly as she pulled away. “We should probably get going.”
Aspen’s throat bobbed. “Yeah. Let me get your door?”
Eve smiled wetly and nodded. “Always.”
She wiped away her tears with her sleeve as she watched Aspen jog around the front of the car to her door, and couldn’t stop herself from falling into Aspen’s arms the moment it was opened. They held each other there in the crisp December mountain air while planes came and left, and cars zipped past until the silently clicking clock hanging over their heads became impossible to ignore. Once Aspen had pulled her luggage from the back and closed the hatch, she took her hand and laced their fingers together. Neither of them seemed to have the energy to even pretend to smile as they trudged from the small parking lot to the terminal that wasn’t much larger.
On any other day, the pity on the ticketing agent’s face when she checked her bag would have made Eve cringe, but she was too focused on the warm, solid feeling of Aspen’s hand in hers, holding strong, tethering them together, to care. It took all her self-control to not scream that she’d changed her mind as they approached the security checkpoint, and her tears that had slowed to a trickle spilled forth anew as she turned into Aspen and collapsed in her arms.
