I fucking loved seeing her.Reallyseeing her again. And I knew from the openness in her expression that she was telling the truth about graduation. But that didn’t mean I knew how to respond to the admission, especially when I’d missed hers. When I hadn’t been able to watch her take those steps away from me. Guilt rained down, my emotions more conflicted than ever.
“Couldn’t have been that interesting,” I muttered, glancing away.
“It was…” she began slowly, toying with my heartstrings. “Well, it was interesting to me.”
I was leaning closer again, unable to help myself. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She licked her lips, and my gaze inadvertently dropped to her mouth. “Hey, Sawyer?”
“El?”
I forced my eyes back to hers, but it wasn’t any better. Only inches separated Ellie and me at this point. Her shallow breaths ghosted my skin as she exhaled, and her chest grazed mine with each inhale.
“Don’t get rid of this stuff,” she whispered.
“The pictures?”
“Any of it.”
“I don’t know. It’s probably time to…clear this room out,” I said hoarsely. Unconvincingly. “Move on.”
She blinked up at me with those big brown eyes, and even though I just said the wordsmove on,I was doing anything but that. In my head. And here, in this bedroom. I wasn’t moving anywhere but toward her. Always back to her.
“I think this will maybe be good for us,” I added, even as I slid my hand a few inches down so it covered Ellie’s upturned palm, which rested beside her head. My skin tingled where it touched hers, sparks of familiarity licking my insides.
Her breath hitched ever so slightly, telling me she felt it, too. “What will?”
“You, living here.”
I dragged my palm over hers until my fingertips grazed the faint outline of the veins in her wrist. She shivered, and I stopped, pressing my hand flat to hers. With painstaking attention, I aligned our fingers—as much as two hands that were drastically different sizes could be aligned, anyway. “Being here. It’ll be like…exposure therapy, I think.”
That’s what this was—this thing I was doing where I touched her. It was exposure therapy. Ex-sanctioned exposure therapy. Totally normal.
One half of her mouth curved, distracting me with its graceful, beautiful shape. “Isn’t exposure therapy, like, when you’re slowly exposed to things you’re scared of?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Pretty sure it’s something like that.”
She cocked her head a little. “Are you scared of me, Sawyer?”
“Mmm,” I hummed. “You could say that.”
It wasn’t so much that I was scared of her, but I was definitely scared of whatever it meant that she was back. I was scared of the proximity. I was scared that I would fall back into some sort of hopefulness that maybe she’d stay. And then she’d leave, just like before, and I’d never recover. I was scared I’d touch her, and then she’d disintegrate in my fingers, and I’d never be able to fully grasp her again.
So yeah, I was scared. Terrified, really.
“If it makes you feel better, I’m scared, too,” she whispered as she shifted her fingers to intertwine with mine, clasping our hands together.
Alarm shot into my throat. Because here I was thinking about her, about wanting her, and being selfish with the way I wanted her, and she was likely scared for more totally legitimate reasons. She had months of pregnancy ahead of her to navigate as she started her life over here.
“I know, El.” I tightened my grip on her hand. “But it’s going to be okay. I promise?—”
“Ellie?!”
Oh, you have to be fucking kidding me.
“Sul?!”
Nope, not kidding.
