She looked at me with a longing in her eyes, tears streaking her cheeks. Like she was waiting.
Waiting for me to say or do something.
The words sat there on my tongue.I love you.But I couldn’t fucking say them. Fear gripped my chest tight. Panic tore through me.
I froze.
I went completely and humiliatingly still.
And then I fucking cried.
The elevator doors slid open. She stepped inside, and I watched her leave, taking with her the only dream that ever mattered to me—the one that included us.
Somewhere between then and now, we learned how to be everything in-between.
Friends.
Lovers.
Strangers.
Almost.
We keep just enough of each other in our lives to never really move forward.
We just stay.
Here.
In this space of wanting more and not knowing how to get there.
I swing open the door to the hotel and walk through the lobby, anticipation rising when I think about my wife upstairs, waiting for me.
A smile curves my lips.
I guess the love survived.
We just didn’t.
Because here I am, almost twenty years later, still loving her like I did when I was seventeen—only deeper.
And with so much more to lose.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
JORDAN
I thinkyou got drunk because you were afraid of what you might feel after.
I let the words play over and over. Just like they have been since yesterday morning.
Funny. How badly Iwishthat were the truth.
Because it couldn’t be further from it.
I didn’t get drunk because I was afraid of what I might feel after. I already knew what I would feel.
I was already feeling it.
