Chapter 40
Theo
We watched the rain roll in like a curtain being drawn over the woods, the water pinging on the roof of the barn. The weather was as gloomy as my mood as Dawson and I sat in the hay loft, our legs dangling over the side. Nostalgia crept in as I remembered all the days we spent just like this, sitting side by side in Neverland, watching the world turn and wishing it would pause for a little while.
“When do you have to leave again?” Dawson checked for the fourth time. At this point, I wondered if he ignored the previous times I’d said it just to live in denial a bit longer.
“At nine,” I replied dully, playing with his fingers and watching two birds take cover from the rain in the barn’s rafters.
Thirty minutes.
Just thirty minutes before I left him one more time, only if everything worked the way I prayed it would, it would be the last time I ever had to walk away from him. Then our next chapter could begin.
“I don’t know why this feels so…heavy,” I wondered aloud. “It’s not like I’ll be gone super long. Thirty or forty days is nothing in the grand scheme of things, right?”
Dawson nodded, lips twisting in a sad smirk.
“And I think we made a smart choice to not call each other. It’ll guarantee that my focus is on therapy and recovery, and it’ll make it that much better when we see each other again, you know?”
“You’re rambling,” he pointed out amusedly.
“Oh, is that what I’m doing? How annoying of you to notice,” I grumbled, drawing a breathy laugh from him. “It’s just a lot to process and this is my last big chance to get stable.”
“It’s not.”
Confused, I turned my head in his direction. “What do you mean ‘it’s not’?”
“It’s not your last chance,” he refuted. “Don’t put that pressure on yourself. If this doesn’t work out, then we’ll try another way. And if that one doesn’t work, then we’ll try a different one. We’ll do whatever it takes to find the right path for you.”
“That could take forever and by then, you’d be sick of waiting around for my ass.” The joke fell flat under the hint of truth in my fear.
Dawson’s features lined with frustration, but under that I noticed the challenge too. He didn’t say a word as he dug in his pocket, pulling out his phone and unlocking it to send a text. I tried to ask him who he texted, but he silently held a finger up for me to wait.
He sat there, swinging his legs and staring at the rain as we waited for a call, text, or whatever he wanted to come through on his phone. A couple minutes later, his phone chimed with an incoming text and he smiled at the screen.
“Let me get this straight,” he started. “You think that there is a possibility that I could one day get tired of waiting for you.”
“I was just kidd?—”
“No, you weren’t, because there’s at least some tiny part of you that believes there is a chance that could happen one day.”
I swung my head back to look out at the water pelting the ground, unable to look him in the eye where he’d see the truth. I didn’t want to be insecure at all about Dawson’s love and commitment to me. One of the major things I wanted to work on at Harbor House was learning to distinguish anxiety from reality and combat the thoughts that liked to…well, rain on my parade.
“I asked Dani to send me this picture because I think you really need to see it. It might put some things in perspective for you.”
He held my phone out for me. Sighing, I took it and looked at the photo he had pulled up, and my brows pinched together.
“I’m not sure what I am looking at. I mean, I knowwhatI’m looking at obviously, but I don’t understand what it means because it couldn’t mean what I think it means…could it?”
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screenshot of a jewelry website and the platinum men’s ring that was front and center on the image. The platinum men’sengagementring, according to the description.
“It means exactly what you think it means,” Dawson replied simply. “And so will this…”
He snuck his finger over and swiped to the next photo, this one of a different, but equally as beautiful engagement band. I scanned the entire screen, taking it all in until my gaze blurred. Dawson removed the phone from my trembling hand and grasped it instead, pulling my attention to him.
“Dani took that first photo when she was sneaking around my computer the week of Homecoming. And that second photo was one I took when I was looking at the website when you were in the hospital.”
My pulse took off like fucking Secretariat as his gaze grew more intense, waiting for me to make the connection out loud. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to say it on the sliver of a chance I was wrong. I was too fragile, too weak to be wrong about this.
