Page 152 of Romeo

Jasper: Might?

Me: I’m still gathering evidence

Jasper: I’ll send more pictures.

Me: That feels like bribery

Jasper: Is it working?

I smiled.

Me: Maybe

I put the phone down and looked out the window, watching a car pass slowly along Main Street. For months, I’d been terrified that Jasper would discover something about me that changed the way he looked at me.

It hadn’t occurred to me until recently that he might be taking risks too.

Maybe his secrets weren’t the kind that kept me awake at night, but he was still showing me pieces of himself and waiting to see what I did with them. The difference was that Jasper seemed to do it without fear.

Or maybe he simply hid the fear better.

I picked up the phone again and returned to the picture.

His attention wasn’t what frightened me anymore. I’d already accepted how much I liked having it.

The frightening part was how completely he had mine.

Jasper had slipped into the spaces between everything else in my life. I thought about him in the morning when I reached for my phone. I wondered what he was doing while I worked. When something funny happened, I found myself storing it away so I could tell him later. When something hurt, he was usually the person I wanted before I even understood what I needed from him.

Somewhere along the way, he’d become part of the rhythm of my life.

And I’d let him.

That truth didn’t make me want to run anymore.

It only made the other truth harder to ignore.

If Jasper trusted me enough to show me the parts of himself nobody else saw, eventually I’d have to do the same. Eventually, Charlie’s name couldn’t stay on the safe side of the line I’d drawn between my past and Jasper.

I looked at the baby sleeping against his chest.

Maybe that was why the picture affected me so much.

I wasn’t wondering whether Jasper liked children.

I was wondering what his face would look like when I finally told him I already had one.

The house was quiet when I climbed into bed Thursday night. Granny had gone to sleep hours ago, and the only sound came from the ceiling fan turning lazily above me. My phone rested against my chest while I stared into the darkness and tried, for what felt like the hundredth time, to figure out how to tell Jasper about Charlie.

Nash had been right at the graduation party.

I couldn’t ask Jasper to keep trusting me while I withheld one of the biggest pieces of my life.

Knowing that and actually telling him were two very different things.

I could tell him I’d gotten pregnant at fifteen. That part was simple enough to say. A fact. A number. Something that had happened years ago.

The rest was harder.