His hands twist around the steering wheel, and I know… this is the last time I’ll see him, and none of it feels fair.
“I don’t know what else to say,” he mutters. His jaw tightens. He is a brick wall seated beside me—no part of him begging me forward, urging me into his arms.
“I don’t think there’s anything left to say.” The words are almost enough to shatter me—my own words… are lies. Because I want to say a thousand things; I want his hand to touch mine; I want him to say that there will never be enough words, never enough momentsbetween us, never enough time. Because he’s missed me so much that it’s felt like death.
But he doesn’t.
He closes his mouth, a subtle nod tipping his chin down, like he understands that it’s too late for that. There’s no going back.
He breathes, then finally speaks—saying the worst thing of all—so softly, I almost don’t hear it. “It was just a summer thing… anyway.” My eyes flash to his, but there is nothing there. No comfort. No regret. Only his words, and they feel like a rusted blade driving straight down to bone. Twisting. Shattering what’s left of my insides. Ripping me apart. But I manage to nod,agreeing, even though I don’t mean it.
This is the end of our story.
The tulips are gone, torn away with the flood, and maybe now… what he felt for me is gone too. The enchantment, the allure, has worn off. A thing he can’t pinpoint, a feeling that was once alive inside him, has evaporated with the storm.
His heart no longer aches to reach out for me.
When I leave, when I’m gone, he won’t miss me.
He’ll hardly think of me ever again.
I wish I felt the same.
I wish I felt nothing.
But when my eyes skim over him, I know my thoughts are just as wrecked as they’ve always been. He rubs a hand down his forearm, and I think how impossibly beautiful he is, how he was the boy who made me forget, for a few brief weeks, how dangerous love is.
I want to say so many things, but I know it doesn’t matter now. “Goodbye, Oak” is all that comes out. I touch the door handle, aboutto step out into the night, but he reaches for me, and I feel his hand against my arm. Gentle but pleading.
I don’t even realize I’m crying until I turn and Oak is touching my face, wiping at the tears, pulling me into his arms. Maybe it’s pity he feels, the last lingering remnants of compassion for the girl he once thought he couldn’t live without.
I press my face to his shoulder and I breathe in his scent—the river at night, the sun against his tanned skin. Too long I’ve craved this, to feel him against me, to hear his heartbeat in my ear, beating wildly.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “For everything.”
I’m sorry too, but I don’t say it. I don’t know how.
I lift my head from his shoulder, and his horrible, beautiful, painful green eyes lift a millimeter to meet mine… and every part of me cracks into a billion unsalvageable pieces, dissolving onto the floor.Don’t look at me like that,I want to scream.Don’t hold me so close that I can smell the wind in your dark hair. Don’t let each word hang against your lips so slowly that I can imagine myself suspended against your mouth, tumbling, falling, smashing into you.
Fuck.I still love him. And I hate myself for it.
I try to swallow, to dampen my throat enough to speak, but all the right words are now the wrong ones.
I miss you.
Don’t drive away.
I love you.
I always have.
… I still do.
His mouth is only inches from mine; it hovers so close, I could—
Tears stream down my cheeks, and I want to scream—I want to be a million miles away from here and I want to be nowhere else. I want…
I want…
