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“No,” I volleyed back. “I only want you to say what you want to say. Do you love me? It’s a yes or no question. It’s an easy answer you can?—”
“Yes.” Reed stopped pacing, coming to a dead stop a few feet away. He stared at me, jaw clenched tight, hands balled even tighter. “Yes, Halley, I’m in love with you. I think I proved that when I threw myself under the bus and completely destroyed my relationship with my daughter to protect you. To keep her from hating you,” he gritted out. “So, yes…I love you. I love you fiercely, wholly, selfishly and unselfishly, more than I ever fucking should. I love everything about you, from your smile, to your perfect heart, to the way your hair always slips from your ponytail when you’re running or sparring and hides those eyes I’ve been enamored with since the moment I first saw you. I love how you take every picture like it’s the only one you’ll ever take, how you love like it’s simply a way of life, and how you cook from your soul because it makes everyone around you so goddamn happy. I love the strength you pulled from nothing, from bare bones and rock bottom, and how you choose to dance through life with grace and courage, finding music in every soundless shadow, when anyone else would have laid down and died.” He choked out the last words, emotion catching in his throat as his chest puffed with the weight of each breath. “Now…tell me how that changes anything.”
I gaped at him.
Jaw dropped, heart sunk.
Every inch of me was submerged in warm water as I drowned myself in his words. Color drained in my periphery, sapped from each newly gray pocket and hollow crevice. But he was bright. He was vivid. Reed was a dazzling mural, a splash of watercolors in a sepia world.
I hadn’t realized I’d been holding on to all my air until a burst of breath fell out, dousing us both in sunlight. I wanted to curl up, live here, stay forever in this moment of pure contentment.
Reed loved me.
That changed everything.
But the tragic look in his eyes told me he didn’t believe it did.
I rushed forward, spilling into his arms like my bones were made of putty. My face smashed to his chest and I breathed him in, memorizing the scent of his skin and the echo of his confession. “You love me,” I near-sobbed, my tears dampening his shirt.
Slowly, despite everything inside of him telling him to remain stiff and lifeless, he raised both arms and wrapped them around me, pulling me closer. Love did that. It zapped your heart when it’d rather give out, and it possessed your arms when they wanted to droop instead of hold. He was defenseless. Love made us all so damn defenseless.
“You know I love you. But that’s not always enough.”
“It has to be. We’ll make it so.”
“We don’t have that kind of power, Comet. We don’t fit.”
I shook my head against him. “We fit in every way that matters.”
Palming the back of my head, he pressed a hard kiss to my forehead before inching me away. He held me at arm’s length, both hands curled around my biceps as he bent to eye-level. “Listen to me. If I saw a way out of this, I’d take it. I’d fucking reach for it and keep you in my arms forever. But that’s not how the cards fell. You’re nineteen years old, and I’m thirty-six,” he said. “Your life is just beginning. You need to be brave enough to start over.”
My face crumpled with agony. “I want to start over with you.”
“How?” The question was full of thorns and barbs. “I can’t marry you. I’m not having anymore babies. I’m pushing forty, Halley, and you’re on the brink of a bright, fulfilling future.”
“I don’t need marriage and babies,” I reasoned.
“You say that now.”
“I’ll say it forever. None of that matters.”
“Stop. Please, stop and think.” He squeezed me tighter. “All your dreams. Your plans. You can’t toss them to the wind on a feeling that never should have existed in the first place. Feelings change and ebb, but lost time is irreversible. You’re going to wake up one day and realize you threw everything away, and for what? A relationship with your best friend’s dad that no one will ever condone, let alone nurture?”
My body shook with tremors, my lips wobbling as I tried to speak. Nothing came out. Words turned to dust on my tongue.
He latched onto my hesitation. “Go to Charleston,” he pleaded. “Swim in the ocean, take pictures, walk down the aisle in a white gown, and raise beautiful children who see you as the center of their universe. I want that for you. I need that for you.” Pain carved its way into his words as he tried in vain to keep the shudder out of his voice. “If you don’t go, I will…but I think you should. It’s what’s right. And I know you see that, too, even though it’s really fucking hard.”
I shook my head side to side, rejecting what I did know was right. The proof resided in everything he’d just said. Our relationship was doomed. Severed at the roots before it ever had a chance to grow.
I knew he was right. But all I wanted was right now.
Right here. With him.
I lived my life in present moments, because there used to be days when I didn’t know how many I’d have left. A fist to my face could have been the last. Glass in my artery could have caused me to bleed out. Days locked in my bedroom with no food might have led to my slow, painful demise.
The future was a privilege. Dreams were a luxury.
I cherished the right now.