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This decision is about more than just dancing.
Our future depends on it.
Glancing at him with swollen, puffy eyes, I reach up and clasp his face between my palms. “I know we’ll be miles apart, but…” My lips quiver. My hands shake. “You’re still Brant…and I’m still June.”
His eyes close, and he says in a strangled breath, “That’s right.”
I pull up on my tiptoes to kiss him. “You told me one year on Christmas Eve that sometimes a lot of love can make you cry,” I whisper, pressing a kiss to the little freckle that dots his lower lip. “I didn’t understand it then. I didn’t even want it.” I kiss him again, lingering longer. “But I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world, Brant. Loving you is worth every single tear.”
His forehead crashes against mine as a gut-wrenching sound passes through his lips. “A lot of love…is a good thing to have,” he says, his voice worn and raw, echoing his past words. “The downside is the more love you have, the harder it is to lose it.”
“We’ll never lose it. I’ve been yours since the day I was born and I’ll be yours until the day I die. Distance doesn’t change destiny.”
Brant scoops me into his arms as our mouths collide and our tongues seek. The kiss is desperate and frenzied, full of salt from our tears and mournful moans. I feel him breaking down the longer our mouths remain fused, the longer he touches me, longing to keep me. His grip tightens, his fingers fisting any place he can reach—my waist, my neck, my hair. He devours me, angling his mouth to taste new places, hoping to unlock one where we can both escape to.
His resolve is disintegrating.
He’s cracking.
And I’m on that frozen pond again, needing to make a choice that will change the course of my life.
With a strangled cry, I pull back, shaking my head, knowing I need to be the strong one now.
Brant has spent his entire life being the strong one.
He’s taken on my added weight, my heavy burdens, and he’s carried them with dignity. With pride. Brant has always gone out of his way to protect me, and now it’s my turn.
It’s my turn to be brave.
His mother’s last words to him filter through my mind, tightening my chest with sentiment. I heave in a rickety breath, taking a small step back. “I’ll always protect you.”
I watch him carefully as a beat passes.
As he absorbs my words.
His kissed lips part with a sharp inhale.
“Now…cover your ears,” I tell him gently.
Brant’s eyes flash with memory. With painful familiarity. A single tear makes a languid, agonizing descent from the corner of his eye, down his cheek.
But he does it.
He obeys.
His hands lift slowly as his eyes close tight, more tears pooling and falling, and he cups his ears, exhaling a long, tapered breath.
“I don’t want to leave,” I begin, placing my own hands over his, keeping my voice low. Tears pour down my face like a fractured dam. “I want to stay and build a life with you—a beautiful life I know we deserve. I want to marry you, Brant Elliott, and I want to make love to you every night beneath rainbows and stars. I want to have children with you. I want to raise them strong and brave, just like their father, and I want to sing them lullabies by the light of the moon.” My words clip with grief, and I take a moment to find my voice again. With a sorrow-filled sigh, I finish, “I don’t want to chase my dream because it’s not a dream without you in it.”
I stare at him.
Exposed, vulnerable, so beautiful and broken.
His palms are pressed against both ears as wetness streaks his face like sad, falling raindrops. His eyes are still squeezed shut as his body shivers with emotion.
I pull away, letting go of his hands and waiting.
A few heavy moments stretch between us before Brant’s eyes flutter open and his hands slowly drop from his ears. He licks away the tears at the corner of his mouth and whispers raggedly, “What did you say?”
