Page 104 of Autumn on My Mind

Like he’s never seen me before.

“Wait. What?” he says again. “Why would we get married?”

I blink at him. “Because we love each other.”

He shakes his head and pulls his arm out of my grip. “No,” he says with a sigh. “That’s not what I—” He breaks off, still bewildered. “What could marriage possibly solve?”

Why is he not understanding how good this could be?

“We could stay together,” I say quickly. “We could be together.”

“We could stay together anyway,” he says. The baffled look in his eyes is spreading over his already confused face, and he’s still looking at me as though he’s worried about my sanity. “Although”—he sighs again and looks away—“I’m not sure we should.” He runs his hand down his face. “I’m not sure we should have dated at all, Reese.” His mouth sets into a grim line. “Do you not understand how serious this is?”

“Of course I do.” Impatience twists with panic in my chest, because I don’t like where this is headed. I don’t want to lose him. “But are you just going to give up?” I swallow the knot in my throat. “Have you really never thought about our future?”

His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t answer. I can see him hurtling miles and miles away from me, even though he hasn’t moved.

I grab his arm again. “When you love someone, you put in the work,” I say. I can hear the desperation in my voice, and I hate it, but I don’t know how to make it leave.

“Exactly.” Once again he removes his arm carefully but firmly from my grasp. “You work. You take the time to do it right. You think things through. You don’t jump recklessly into something that’s doomed to fail, just because you’re scared.” He pauses. “This was so dumb.” His shoulders curl in. “Impulsive and stupid. And asking me to get married?”

And, as though my mother has been summoned by talk of marriage, my phone begins to ring; I look at the screen impatiently, and when I see it’s Alvina, I have to stop myself from throwing the phone on the ground.

Dominic sees too; he lets out a tired, bitter laugh.

My face heats, but I shove the phone in my pocket. “We’re not doomed to fail, Dom. We would only fail if we let ourselves. The second you let yourself doubt, you open that door⁠—”

“Then I guess it’s open,” he cuts me off, and this is the closest I’ve ever seen him come to anger. His voice is quiet, but it’s simmering with emotion, his words clipped, his eyes masked. “If you want to say it that way, fine. But one of us needs to proceed with caution, and it’s clearly not going to be you.”

My mouth snaps shut as the accusation hits, and so does his. Then he shakes his head.

“This was a bad idea. This was a really bad idea, Reese. We should have waited⁠—”

“No.” I try to blink away the tears, to hold them in, but they sting my eyes anyway. For the first time in so long, I feel loved—truly, wholly, without conditions or hoops I have to jump through. “No. You’re just scared, Dom. You’re scared.”

I don’t mean to hurl the word the way I do, but it flies out all the same—an accusation of my own, full of the emotions bursting in my chest.

His eyes, already shuttered, go completely blank. “And you’re a dog on a leash, letting yourself be dragged around by your mom,” he says flatly. “You realize you’re just like her, don’t you? Making giant, reckless decisions on a complete whim? So neither of us are perfect.”

It’s a blow to the chest, broken ribs and sternum and everything else that protects my heart from damage. His words break through all of those bones and pierce me where it hurts the most. I blink in shock and swallow down my anger, my frustration, because I need to remain rational.

“Let’s talk about this later,” I say, my voice tight.

But Dominic shakes his head again, looking tired and crumpled. “No. Let’s not.” He exhales until he’s completely deflated. “It’s my fault. We should never have done this.”

I stare at him in disbelief. “You’re really running away. As soon as it’s inconvenient, you run.”

Am I so easy to cast aside? Was our relationship all in my head?

“I’m not running,” he says, but it’s not convincing. “I’m being smart.”

“Then what exactly are you saying?” I’m clinging to the hope that maybe I’m misunderstanding—that I’ve got this all wrong.

“I’m saying this was a mistake. That you and I were a mistake. I’ve lost my job, I’m probably going to be kicked out of school, and who knows what this will do to your academic record—and now you’re talking about getting married”—he throws one hand up in bewilderment—“and it’s insane. I’m insane. Dating a student?” He’s talking to himself more than to me now. “This whole thing was wrong.”

Wrong.

There’s no compromise I can come up with for that. No way to meet him in the middle. And I see it, all over his face, in his posture—he’s miserable. Dominic is completely miserable.