Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 83586 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83586 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
“Shut up!” he shouted, hands fisted in his hair, tugging the strands as he walked away. I swayed on my feet slightly. “I can’t do this anymore. It’s killin’ me, Jasp. Don’t you get that it’s fuckin’ killin’ me?” His eyes were pleading, a need in them for me to see, for me to understand, for me to make it better.
I threw my hands up. “Then tell me how to fuckin’ fix it! I told you I’d do whatever it takes. Don’t care what it is. I just can’t lose you.” If Sutton left, my whole life would be derailed. I wasn’t sure I’d still be tethered to the earth, just wandering and trying to find the place I belonged, when I already knew it was with him.
His voice was stern, loud, when he spit out, “I’m in love with you! Don’t you get that?” My heart rammed into my chest over and over. Then softer, “I’m in love with you, and it’s been slowly killin’ me for years, even though I didn’t always realize it. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t be around you all the time and not be able to have you. One day, once I get past this, maybe, but…”
I swayed again, emotion clogging up my airway, my vision swimming, and my chest…why did it feel so big? So fucking full? But I was off-balance too, like my world was shifting, everything off its axis, or hell, maybe it had been, maybe my whole life had been wrong and now things were settling into place, finally righting themselves. “Then we’ll do that. If that’s what I gotta do to keep you, then I will.”
He sighed and closed his eyes. “Real nice of you to make that sacrifice for me. I don’t want you to handle being with me because you’re afraid to lose me. I want you to do it because you feel for me just a shred of what I feel for you.”
Because he loved me. Sutton was in love with me. This man who knew me better than anyone else, who saw every single part of me, was in love with me. How did I get so lucky? What did I do to deserve him loving me like that?
“You’re talkin’ out loud again, and you’re really fuckin’ confusin’ me. Sometimes I think you feel it too, do you hear me, Jasp? Sometimes the way you look at me, the things you say to me… Tonight, the way you remember all those details, everything about us. I think you feel it too, and that just messes me up worse because you don’t…or if you ever did, you couldn’t do nothin’ about it. You wouldn’t let yourself. Not for real. Maybe the only way you could is by tellin’ yourself that you’re doin’ it for me, but I need more than that. If I don’t go now, I’ll spend my whole life waitin’ for you, taking whatever scraps you can give me until you settle down, get married, and don’t need me no more.”
“I won’t ever not need you,” I admitted. It was the truth.
I thought about that day at the lake, the scent on his breath and the way he made me shiver when I felt it against my cheek. The warmth in my belly when our arms touched. The way I could listen to Sutton talk forever, and how nothing was more important than making sure he was okay.
“I’m in love with you! Don’t you get that?”
I thought about how it felt to play guitar with him, the smile that settled in my heart when he hummed or sang. I thought about cooking dinner together and food fights. About that time I got sick and he didn’t leave my side. About getting him ice cream after his tetanus shot and lazy summer days with him by my side. Always by my side.
The threesome when we were eighteen, and how I remembered every curve of his body, the way every muscle in his body shifted. The way a tingle zipped across my skin when we’d accidentally touch.
Flying off rope swings into the water, laughter, tears, holidays, mowing lawns together, and picking fresh-cut grass off his sweaty neck. How I always knew what Sutton smelled like, and it reminded me of home.
“I’m in love with you! Don’t you get that?”
Sleepovers when we were kids and building our house together and dreaming of cities to visit on a train because I knew it was what he liked to hear.
So many moments…
Was that what it felt like to be in love with someone? Like there was nothing you wouldn’t do for them, and every second you ever shared was held in its own locked vault in your head so you knew they would always be there?
My gaze met his, and I realized he’d been watching me, seeing me sort through all this stuff inside me, building the picture of something I’d always had. Every piece of the puzzle had been there inside me, waiting for me to put it together, waiting for me to find the courage to fit them together the way they were always meant to be.