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He lets out a deep breath. “What if we date and I fuck this up. You will leave me. Your family will obviously and rightfully choose you. Then, I’m back to being that orphaned guy in college who plays football. If I hurt you, where will that leave us? Me?”
“You’re hurting me right now, Caleb,” I whisper.
“JJ, baby,” he says, reaching out to me.
I take a step back. “No. Don’t call me that. I wish we never did this.”
“This is what I was scared of. Losing you. Losing your parents. Losing the only family I’ve known.”
“We don’t know what could happen in the future, but aren’t we worth the risk?”
“No,” he replies with zero hesitation. I jerk back as if he struck me.
“JJ—”
“Caleb, I love you. My family loves you and you will always have us. But you can’t have it all. We can’t go back to how we were. I can’t pretend I don’t have these feelings for you.”
“This is exactly what I was afraid of.”
I shake my head. “I’ll be in your life, but from a distance. Like that friend you see every once in a while. Because It’ll hurt too much. Seeing you all the time and not having you. Especially if I have to see you with someone else.”
“I don’t want to ruin us.”
I try one last time. I fight for him one more time, then I’m done. I can’t keep doing this with him.
“Then, love me, Caleb. Love me knowing you’ll never lose us.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t.”
I nod slowly in defeat. “I know you. I know how much your childhood has affected you. But how long are you going to let it control you? You play football to prove to the people who abandoned you that they made a mistake in leaving you. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone but yourself. I just wish you saw that. I just wish you trust us—trust me—enough to know you’ll always have a family. But I can’t wait for you to be ready. I’ve been waiting long enough.”
I turn to walk away, and he grabs my arm. “Please don’t leave.”
“You can’t have it all.”
“Josephine—”
Gently, I pull myself out of his grip. “I’ll come back when it won’t hurt to look at you anymore.” With that, I walk out the door and to my car, forcing the tears back. I can feel his eyes on me, but he doesn’t stop me from leaving.
In the dead silence of the night, I drive home with a tight grip on the steering wheel. My surroundings pass me by, but nothing processes.
He cares more about football and having my family as a security blanket than he does about me. He’s so scared of being alone again that he doesn’t realize he doesn’t have to be. That I’m right here. I’ve always been here. Waiting and hoping for when he finally realizes that I’m it for him. That he loves me.
I broke the promise we made. To go back to normal after our agreement. If I had understood the depths of my love for him before we made this stupid agreement, I would’ve never said yes to this.
As soon as I put my car in park, I finally let the tears rush down my face. I yank my phone out of my pocket and struggle to find my sister’s number through the blur of my tears.
“Hello?” she answers on the second ring.
“Can I come stay with you?” I stammer.
“Oh, Josie. What happened?”
I tell her everything, not leaving out a single detail. While we’re on the call, she buys me a one-way plane ticket to leave in the early morning.
15
Two Weeks Later
