He finally lifts his head, his face unreadable through the stream. “I don’t get to sit on your couch, eat some takeout, and pretend my whole world isn’t falling apart at the seams. You don’t need to get involved in my mess of a life.”
He drags a hand down his face, rain running off his jaw.
“If I let you decide what happens next, you’ll stay.” His jaw works once. “And I’d watch you do it, every day. Knowing exactly what you gave up to stay for me. I can’t live with that, Lance.”
“More than anything, I just want to be with you. Help you.”
He steps closer, and his voice goes hard in a way that isn’t angry anymore—it’s final. “I don’t need your help. I need you to look at yourself and understand what you’re giving up by staying. You don’t have time. There’s nothing for you here.”
That slams into my chest like a hammer. I don’t miss the meaning of it.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.” George holds my eyes. “You think if we just tried it, gave it some time, it’d sort itself out one way or another.” His voice is rough, sad. “That’s not how I work, Lance. Never has been. I don’t try things and see. I already know how this ends when you go. There’s nothing in between.”
I was expecting to lash out, not laugh at that, bitter and short. I close the last of the distance between us until we’re almost chest to chest, rain hammering down on now.
I can’t believe I let myself care too much.
My voice cuts up over the rain. “You know what fucking sucks?” I swallow hard and it doesn’t help. “I don’t even know how to say it. It’s not one thing. It’s just—” I gesture at nothing. “It’s everything. It’s all of it. And I don’t get a version of my life that doesn’t have you in it like this, and now I’m supposed to just figure out how to be okay with that.”
My voice cracks hard in the middle and I don’t bother fighting it anymore.
“I’m supposed to go live in Seattle, missing every annoying, amazing fucking thing about you, while you stand there telling me I’ll be fine.”
The words start pouring out faster, messier, dragged up by the rain. The dark and the sheer exhaustion of carrying this shit for solong. I pace back and forth without meaning to, two steps one way and then back again, too wound up to stay still and too fucked up to walk away.
“I would have stayed. We could have figured out how to make the whole damn thing ours—”
For one awful second, the plea “please ask me to stay” almost breaks free. I slam it down hard and shove it back where it belongs so I don’t end up looking like even more of a pathetic fool than I already am.
“But fuck it. I’m done.”
I shove him with everything I have, both hands flat against his chest.
George barely gives ground. In the next instant, his hand catches the front of my jacket and he marches me backward, pinning me against the hood of my car. Metal rattles beneath me. Rain snaps between us in hard sheets.
He’s too close now, close enough that his breath hits my face warm against the cold. His eyes are wide, but it’s not control anymore—it’s gone. All of it.
“You think I wanted this?” His voice breaks through the rain. “You think I planned on watching you walk away because I couldn’t keep you without losing the only thing that’s kept me together?”
His grip tightens like he hates that he can’t let go.
“You’re not some project.” He shakes his head once, like he’s trying to reset and failing. “You matter, Lance. More than I know what to do with. And it doesn’t fucking change anything.”
A breath, rough and uneven. His forehead almost dips toward mine, then stops.
I know this doesn’t help either,” he says, voice rough. “But I can’t—”
His hand comes up to my jaw, and it’s shaking before he even seems to notice it. He doesn’t finish.
He kisses me.
It’s not gentle or careful. His mouth hits mine hard, months of everything we never said smashing into it. His fist twists in my jacket while his weight pins me to the car, trying to hold the whole goddamn moment in place by force. I grab his soaked shoulders and drag him closer. The kiss tastes like the end of something I’m too stubborn to see die and the start of what I’m scared as hell to face alone.
Nothing is fixed. My fucking car is still dead, whatever we are is still in pieces, and the rain doesn’t give a fuck either way.
40
