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His eyes skimmed my face as he continued to read me, drinking in my silly tears. Then he nodded once, reached over my lap, and popped open the glove compartment. I tilted my knees to the side and watched as he sifted around for something before pulling out a cassette tape.

He slipped it into the tape deck, fiddling with some buttons, and turned the volume all the way up on the dial. “Come on,” he said before opening his door and stepping outside.

I sat there frozen for a moment as music spilled from the speakers.

A slower, dreamy song.

I didn’t recognize it…until I did.

It was a cover of Save the Last Dance for Me. I remembered sitting on Jay’s bed, mentioning the song to him while we sorted through CDs.

“There’s a really good cover of that song by Harry Nilsson,” he’d said to me.

The tears dried up on my cheeks as the concrete in my chest melted into slush. A smile pulled on my lips, and I pushed open my door, sliding out as my heels connected with earth. I joined him on the side of the truck while the lake rippled and shimmered behind us—the perfect backdrop.

The song was loud, spilling out through Reed’s open door.

He stood before me, draped in a moonlit hug. The breeze caught my hair, and it took flight all around me, in time with my heart. I moved toward him, slowly, carefully.

Reed extended his hand. “Dance with me.”

Our palms locked, and he pulled me to his chest.

His hand planted gently at the small of my back as I curled my fingers around his bicep, and we swayed in a perfect, lovelorn rhythm.

My cheek to his chest.

His heartbeats vibrating through me.

Side to side, lazy circles, our touches tender and soft.

I was lost.

Chords and notes awakened every piece of me as he sang the chorus into my hair, his voice a low, gritty serenade.

I held him tighter, burrowed deeper. Intimacy warmed me, cradling me in its unfit arms. I wanted to dance tonight, but I never expected this. I never expected his body pressed to mine, our fingers and souls intertwined.

And I realized, with every painful inch of me, that I would never dance like this again.

Stars twinkled down on us with unanswered wishes, only offering a smattering of spotlight. Reed pressed his lips to my hairline, and I closed my eyes, savoring the few minutes we had left.

I knew that when I left his arms tonight, I would never get them back. These arms would never swoop me backward on an alter as we shared a forever kiss. They would never hold me in the middle of the night when I awoke from a nightmare. They would never cushion our newborn baby as he gazed down at a pink or blue swaddle with love in his eyes.

I wanted all of those things.

But I wanted them with the wrong man.

Reed rested his cheek on the top of my head as his hand stroked up and down my back, leaving warm shivers behind. “You like this song?” he murmured into my hair.

A tear slipped down my cheek as the final chords rang out. I nuzzled my face to his chest, wrapped my arms around him, and whispered back, “It’s my favorite.”

CHAPTER 22

I gazed out the window as Reed drove me back to the Stephens’ house, my hands tightly woven in my lap as the cassette tape played a handful of unfamiliar songs that did little to curb my love-born curse. Silence festered while streaks of streetlight and porch lamp sailed by in dizzy ribbons, blurring the lines inside of me that separated logical reasoning from emotional demand.

My head and my heart.

I wondered what it would be like to live in a world where the head always won out.