Even now when I don’t want it to be, I can’t help but smile back at him, though something splinters in my chest as I do.
How can it feel like this already? How can it hurt so badly? It’s been just over a month. Two dates, a few other encounters, and a million memes. That doesn’t seem like that much in the grand scheme of things, and yet it feels like a lifetime of heartbreak is about to wash over me like the waves breaking on the rocks below. Hard, fast, crushing, with the power of a thousand seas.
Is this a sliver of what it felt like for Gran to lose Grandpa? I can’t seem to take a full breath. Can’t stop the shards of pain from slicing through my chest. Maybe I shouldn’t want them to stop. Maybe it’s better that I feel every ounce of pain—it’ll remind me of what Gran went through and how I don’t know if I’d survive that kind of loss when I don’t even know how I’ve survived Grandpa, or how I’ll survive when she leaves me.
“Hey, beautiful,” he greets, engulfing me in a hug where he pulls me into him.
I give into the desire to be near him, wrapping my armsaround his waist, my face burying into his chest. Inhaling deeply, I fill my head with his scent, committing it to memory so that I’ll always know it. A little citrus, a lot pine, and a handful of crisp winter.
Pushing back on the emotion desperate to climb up my throat, I mumble into his t-shirt, “Hi.”
“How’s Gran?” Wyatt asks, pressing a kiss to the top of my head, and it nearly tips the scales in the emotions favor. That he would ask about her first, above all else, even though he’s asked constantly the last three days through text.
“Sassy,” I tell him, and feel the rumble of laughter in his chest.
His hands run up and down either side of my spine, hitting the softness of my exposed upper back in my tank top. The heat from his hands tells me how cold I feel inside, despite the sun beating down on us in the middle of the afternoon. It makes me wish I hadn’t ditched my hoodie in the car before getting out.
Wyatt eases back, his hands sliding to my neck, up to my jaw as I lean back. He’s halfway stooped to my height for a kiss when he pauses, and I watch his expression slowly fall as his eyes move all over my face.
His thumbs drift across my cheeks on either side, his brow pinching together. “What’s wrong?”
I hate this. Hate every second, which should tell me that I shouldn’t do it, but I have to. My priorities have been screwed up since I met Wyatt. I thought I could do it all, have it all. But Gran could have died, and I wouldn’t have any more time with her. I’m not willing to miss out on all the moments I still get to have, even though looking into this man’s green eyes makes me want to crumble, knowing he’d put me back together.
“B, you’re worrying me,” he whispers when I don’t answer. His thumbs brush across my skin again, and it’s then that I realizethe tears have fallen.
A nickname. Even if it is as simple as the first letter of my name. It feels more intimate than him using my name, and it has a noise drifting up my throat that sounds close to a sob.
His eyes aren’t dancing like they normally do. There’s no excitement lighting them up from the inside. Intensity, worry. I’m reminded of that very first night we met, when I had the thought that he looked at me in such a way that made me want to confess all my secrets while laughing.
There’s nothing funny now. No hint of laughter. Not even a smile in sight.
Just the pieces of me I already shared with him shattering.
“Is it Gran?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Your mom?”
My head shakes even harder, and I take hold of his wrists, forcing air into my lungs as I pull his hands away from my face. Blinking the moisture from my eyes, I glance to the bench he vacated to greet me, and nod at it.
“Sit with me?”
Out of my periphery, he nods his head. “Of course.”
He lets me take the lead, and we sit down, shoulder to shoulder, my small hand in his larger one. I love the way he fits around me. It makes me feel safe and secure, and it’s been like that since our very first dance.
“You were never part of my plan,” I tell him, looking out over the water, unable to bring myself to look at him. “My priorities have always been work and Gran. It had to be that way. I left my parents when I was seventeen and still a senior in high school, but after a… uhm, incident, I left—”
“Where you wrecked your dress?” heinterrupts, and my head snaps in his direction, eyes wide. “Your mom mentioned it in the waiting room.”
A humorless laugh erupts from me, and I close my eyes, gritting my teeth to take a breath. We haven’t talked about my parents or what he witnessed. I couldn’t the other day, and we haven’t seen each other since. Besides him checking in and memes, we haven’t spoken a lot.
“Of course she did,” I sigh, my shoulders slumping. She’d hate my posture right now, but I do nothing to correct it. “I was fed up. I cut my hair off right in front of her, broke these stupid veneers she always made me wear, and ruined the most expensive dress she’d ever bought me. I hated that thing. It was itchy and hot and poofy. My coach made a comment about me picking at it and looking uncomfortable right before that part of the program. She said if I couldn’t get it together then I truly was hopeless and she couldn’t help me anymore.”
Wyatt squeezes my hand and I glance over to find him watching me. He leans over then, pressing a kiss to my temple, and I breathe out some of the tension I’m holding in my shoulders. This wasn’t the confession I expected to give him, but he effortlessly pulls truths from me.
Lifting my head, I look out at the water again, focusing on a lone surfer waiting for the next set of waves. “Everything was captured on video. It went viral within the pageant world and around Sonoma. My mom was humiliated, and I couldn’t stand to be around them. My grandparents took me in after that.”
