Good.
At least I’m not burning alone.
“Then what are you doing?” she asks.
Choosing not to lose my damn mind over a girl I have wanted in too many versions and not enough reality.
Instead I look at her and tell the ugliest truth.
“Surviving you.”
That hits.
Not because it hurts her exactly—because she feels it too.
The wanting.
The resisting.
The fact that attraction has long since blown past cute and landed somewhere dangerous.
“I need more time Stells. My season is just starting. I want to have time for you. For us. You know how the season gets—the away games. The pressure.”
“That’s the thing about time… ours never seems to be right.”
She stands, slow and fluid, gathering her notebook and sliding it into her bag.
For one insane second I think she’s leaving because of me.
Then she steps closer to me instead. Not enough to touch. Enough that I can see the tiny pulse in her throat again. Enough that I can smell her. Enough that I know exactly how little it would take to wreck every good intention I’ve built these past few weeks.
She looks down at me, lashes low, mouth soft but unsmiling.
“We might run out of time and chances while you try to figure your shit out, Vale. And you’r doing a terrible job of it.”
Then she brushes past me.
Close enough that her hip barely grazes the arm of my chair.
Close enough that her scent clings to the air after she’s gone.
Close enough that every part of me goes rigid with the effort not to turn, not to reach, not to drag her back and find out if all those fantasies would break us or save us.
The bell over the door chimes.
She’s gone.
And I sit there in the wreckage of her absence, fists clenched, heart pounding, body aching, knowing exactly two things:
She wants me.
I want her.
And I don’t know how much longer I can keep calling this self-preservation when it feels this much like punishment.
I make it exactly seventeen minutes after Stella leaves before I understand something ugly about myself.
I never should have let Isa become the place I went to feel less wrecked.
