Page 135 of Colliding with Ten

The hotel restaurant was styled like an old-fashioned diner with fifties music playing from a jukebox and booth seating. Ayla sat in a booth near the back. She’d changed. Her hair was down, no longer pulled back with a band. She looked up when I slid into the seat across from her.

We were quiet at first, looking at each other across a table that felt wider than it was. Her eyes were swollen at the edges. No makeup was on her face, and she was beautiful without it, but the dark circles and the tension in her shoulders made her look older than usual.

I needed to say something. Anything. But after two weeks of nothing, everything felt off. I didn’t want to ask why she left, afraid it would come off as too aggressive. I missed her, but I’d already said that. So I stayed quiet, watching her fidget with her napkin, searching for words because I was too chicken shit to go first.

The server appeared, and we both refused everything but coffee. When she left, it was quiet again.

“I owe you an explanation,” she said. “And I want to give it to you, if you’ll let me.”

“Okay.”

Her hands gripped the cup harder, stopping the trembling. “I left because I got scared.” She paused, her eyes dropping to the cup. “I woke up at four in the morning, and I was so happy that I panicked.”

She panicked because she was happy? I frowned, trying to find the logic, and couldn’t. “You’re going to have to help me with that because I thought things were going well. Did I do something wrong?”

“No.” She shook her head. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You did everything right.”

She took a breath. “I’d just started building my own life, figuring out what I wanted, not what my father wanted. For the first time, the future felt like mine.” She paused. “Then you were there. You were wonderful, and that night was perfect. Suddenly, I had something else making me happy in a different way.”

Her voice wavered, but she pushed through it. “And I couldn’t figure out how to hold both at the same time.” Her fingers pressed harder into the cup. “I was scared that if I stayed, I wouldn’t want to leave. And if I didn’t want to leave, then what? I move to California? Build my life around your schedule? I become someone who orbits a man instead of being independent?”

In her words, I heard the pattern she’d been fighting since before I knew her. Her life with her father and now AJ. She’d spent her life being pulled into someone else’s gravity, terrified I’d become the next one.

“So . . . I ran. I run when I’m scared. I told you this.”

She wasn’t done. Her expression said the next part was harder than everything that had come before.

“When I got back to New York, I realized how much I missed you—” She stopped, swallowed, and started again. “I wanted to call. Every day, I wanted to call. I tried, but the longer I waited, the harder it got. It wasn’t just about me leaving anymore, and I didn’t know how to fix what I’d done without making you hate me.”

“I’d never hate you.” She looked up and our eyes connected.

For two weeks, I’d checked my phone, convinced she didn’t care—while she did the same. But really, she’d been happy, and it had terrified her into leaving.

“I couldn’t figure out if I’d imagined everything or maybe you’d decided it wasn’t worth it,” I said.

“It was real. And I think it’s worth it.”

“Is that why you came?”

“I came because you were hurt.” She met my eyes. “And I thought, what if something happens to him before I get the chance to tell him the truth. I couldn’t function. I knew I needed to be wherever you were. I didn’t want to pretend that I didn’t care about you anymore.”

I didn’t want to pretend anymore either, and I had no interest in dragging this out and punishing both of us further. If she wanted to try, I wanted it too. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

I reached across the table and covered her hand with mine. “I want to do this.”

Her fingers turned under my palm and held on. Her thumb moved across my fingers, back and forth, the way it had in the hospital.

“What are we going to do?”

She took a deep breath. “Before we jump into this, I think we should clear a few things.” She paused. “Before you decide.”

I waited.

She took a sip of coffee, then continued. “Those comments online⁠—”

“I read them.”