She sniffs and nods and I link her small fingers in mine, cherishing the feel of them.
When we’re on Ben’s front porch with no one in sight, I turn to face her. My face must look as conflicted as I feel.
“Wait. Tell me you’re staying,” she says with a shaky voice, her sweet face dappled in moonlight, “Tell me that’s what this means. That you’re choosing us, this place, these people.” She whispers the last bit, “That you’re choosing me.”
I put her gorgeous face in my hands and tilt her chin up.
“Harper, Sweetheart,choose yourself,”I say, my voice shaking just as much as hers.
“I knew it. I knew it!” She tries to pull away but I don’t let her. “You’re chicken shit just like all of them. I told you. I told you!”
“I—”
“No,” she tugs back and I let her go. “I told you I couldn’t do this again. I told you I would get all dewy-eyed and hopeful and fall in love with you and you’d leave and I’d get hurt all over again!”
I want to grab at the ‘in love with me’ bit like Stuart with a chew toy, but I refrain. For her.
“Harper you tell me. Tell meyoutrulywantto stay here,” I press. She growls and turns away from me to look out over the yard, but I go on. “Tell me you want to reopen the shop and live the rest of your life in Juniper Falls. Tell me.”
“I don’t have a choice,” she says with a crack in her voice that I feel in my chest.
“Says who?” I push her.
“Says me! Says my family, my friends, my father, I have people, Aiden. You don’t know what it’s like which is sad, I get it, and you should really try therapy. Likea lotof therapy, please. Do that. But you don’t just abandon your people because you want to. We don’t all get what we want.”
“I know,” I say, meaning it for maybe the first time. Looking at what I want fall through my fingers this very moment.
“So you’re going to leave,” she says.
“Youshould leave,” I say quickly, “Harper you’re a California girl stuck in a winter town in New Jersey! You should go to Palm Springs. You should see The Beach Boys, the real ones, in Las Vegas. Hell, you should see Dubai if you want. You’re young and healthy and you’re about to be free, finally. You should go everywhere. Try everything.”
With me.
It takes all my strength not to say it out loud.
I want her. I want to go with her. I want to take her with me.
But not because she feels indebted to me. Or entangled or coerced or any of that. Not because she wants to get out of this town or see the world, either.
She wouldn’t knowingly use me, I’m positive about that. But she might enjoy the idea of traveling the world a bit more than she enjoys my grumpy company. When she pauses long enough to figure it out.
I exhale the last few words, “You should go figure out what is you want, then try everything in your power to get it.”
It takes her a moment before she says softly, “What if what I want is you?”
My heart aches.
Every cell in my body tells me to be the old Aiden and screamIt is! I am! I am what you want!But I don’t. Because I love her, apparently.
Bloody terrible feeling, honestly.
“Is it?” I turn on her, purposely aggressive. “Can you tell me that? Are you positive? You’re ready to leave your family and friends and go to London? Right now?”
“Does it have to be one or the other?” A tear breaks free, running down her cheek, and I curse myself.
“Shit,” I say. “It has to be what you actually want, sweet—”
“Don’t! Don’t Sweetheart me. Don’t claim you’re doing what’s best for me just to save yourself. Just go.”
