“One grade, Cho-Cho.One.Don’t blow your stack or anything, but I think this is a gross overreaction. He’s going to come over, you know that, right? Please tell me you know he’s going to come over.”
“It’s raining.” Cleo pointed out the window as though that would somehow stop Lincoln from turning up at her door.
She was doing the right thing, wasn’t she? She needed space. Space to get her head on straight, space to get her grades back up, and most of all space to breathe without the infernal thumping of desperate need between her thighs…
He might not like it, but he’d respect it.
She knew that much. All she’d done lately isfeel, and she needed space tothink. Thinking was her happy place, her comfort zone, she’d been cruising in the unknown for long enough to need a shot of familiarity.
“Honey, a funnel cloud could form over this building and it wouldn’t stop that boy from getting to you.”
“I feel like you’re exaggerating a little bit.”
“Oh really?” Molly pulled the blinds back far enough for Cleo to get a clear view of the street below.
Sheets of rain pelted the concrete as Lincoln pulled up to the sidewalk and parked his bike. Kicking out the stand, he swung his leg over and tugged off his helmet. She should have known he wouldn’t have accepted a break up via text. Her stomach sloshed. She was better than a break up text,hewas better than a break up text, he deserved more.
But she wasn’t strong enough to break up with those imploring blue eyes in person.
She swallowed and grabbed the counter, her knuckles turning white. She was going to have to face him. She hadn’t thought beyond the text. What else could she do? Avoid him around campus every day? It wasn’t a feasible solution. She had class with him. She couldn’t avoid him.
Shit.
She couldn’t avoid him.
Someone knocked on the door. Molly tilted her head and her lips pursed. “I love you Cho-Cho, but if you’re breaking up with this boy for real, you’ve gotta do the actual breaking up.” She held her hands up in surrender and backed away.
Another knock sounded on the door.
“Fuck.” Steeling herself, she sucked in a few steadying breaths, and made her way to the door.
She could do this. She could look into those pools of swirling emotion and tell the man she’d unwittingly fallen for they were over.
She unlocked the door and pulled it open, unprepared for what was waiting for her on the other side. Lincoln leaned his right elbow on the doorframe, his head bowed, and water streamed off his leather jacket onto the carpet underfoot. Rain water trickled from his hair, onto his face.
His sad, red eyes said he’d been crying, but they were filled with an intensity she hadn’t seen before. “That was a chicken shit move, Lizzy.”
She held the door part-way open, body shielded by the wood, hoping it would protect them both from her emotions. She couldn’t let him in, if she did, she’d fall into his arms and forget the whole idea of space.
He pushed off from the wooden frame and stood upright, his imposing frame sucking the air from her lungs. Droplets of water sprayed everywhere as he ran a hand through his hair.
She couldn’t speak. Her heart wanted to grab a fistful of his shirt, back him against the door across the hall, and kiss him until he forgot she’d ever texted him. Her head, on the other hand, had her heart in a cage and was calling the shots.
“Are you letting me come in?”
She shook her head.
He took a step back, but the air between them remained thick and heavy.
“I need to hear you say it out loud.”
Swallowing hard, she shook her head. “Why? It’ll just hurt more.”
“What could hurt more than the woman I love telling me she’s done with me, Cleo? In a fucking text, no less. I’m already broken. There is no deeper level of hurt.”
The woman he loved? Her stomach lurched, heart pounding in her chest and ears.
“You can’t love me.” She shook her head but couldn’t stop his words sliding into the cracks of her heart, wrapping their warmth around her. He couldn’t love her.
