He disappears down the hall.
I go to my room and pack my bag, moving through the motions without thinking about what’s happening. Foldingthings and putting them up, never sitting down because if I sit down, I won’t get up. I grab my stuff from the bathroom, my charger from the wall, the jacket I hung over the desk chair.
And I leave my childhood home for the last time, without saying goodbye.
Chapter 19
Before
I almost didn’t come.
I’ve spent the last two weeks ignoring his texts, telling myself I was done with him, that what he said under the bleachers was the last straw and I deserve better. Screw Jason Barnett.
You think I actually want this? You?
But then he sentplease,andI need you,and a string of texts that I read and reread until I couldn’t justify not responding anymore. That’s the whole problem with Jason. He can be so sweet when he wants to be, and I don’t know which version of him is real.
He’s already there when I reach our spot in the woods, leaning against his truck. “Hey,” he says, and then he does something he almost never does.
His hand finds my jaw, tilting my face up to meet his surprisingly warm eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean it.”
I know I should tell him that it doesn’t matter. What’s done is done and I’m going home and he can deal with the consequences of his actions—
But his thumb is moving along my cheekbone and I don’t want him to stop.
“I forgive you.”
We end up in the truck bed, but something is different tonight. He’s slow. Almost patient, in a way he’s never been. Hisrough hands are gentle as he fingers me open and even more so when he holds my hips to sink into me.
Tonight, it doesn’t hurt.
That’s new.
When it’s over, instead of leaving, he pulls a blanket over us and lies beside me in the truck bed. When his arm wraps around me, I jump at the contact. Jason doesn’t hold me after. He’s usually pulling his jeans up before I even catch my breath.
I’m scared to move. That if I do, the dream will end.
“I love you,” he says, into the dark. I wait for the insult to follow. The laugh, the cruel teasing I’ve come to expect from him.
“I love you too,” I whisper when nothing happens, fully aware that this is the moment I scare him off.
But he pulls me closer.
I stare up at the stars with his arms around me, and I think this might be what I’ve been waiting for. The version of Jason underneath football and expectations.
The version of Jason that loves me.
The real him.
Now
The house is quiet in a way it never is.
There’s no music blaring through the walls. The TV is turned off. Mike isn’t playing his guitar on the couch. I texted him when I left Nate’s even though at this point, after days of nothing, I shouldn’t have expected a response.
Or for him to be here waiting for me.
I look around the living room. The guitar leaning against the wall. The Xbox controllers on the floor. A bag of chips sitting open on the coffee table. Everything exactly where it should be. So I grab the blanket off the couch and I lie down.
