“Miles?” I call out when I reach yet another divide in the path.
Taking the left leads me to a dead end, so I turn and go the other way.
“Miles?”
I’m running past a wide opening when movement catches my eye, and he’s there sitting on a stone bench, head in his hands.
Oh, Miles.
When he looks up, his eyes are red, and it’s obvious he’s a million miles away and hasn’t heard me calling.
Rushing over, I stop in front of him, close enough that his knees bracket my legs, and his head falls on my stomach.
I push my fingers through his thick curls. “I’m so sorry.”
He looks up, his forehead marred with a deep crease. “Why are you sorry? I’m the one who should be sorry.”
“Why?”
He sighs, sitting back again and scrubbing a hand down his face. His pinky ring catches the sunlight. “For what Clementine said. For how that must have made you feel.”
“Miles—”
“She was wrong.”
Gently pressing my palm to his mouth, I stop him from talking more. Tilting his chin, I force him to look up at me. “It’s not your apology to make. And it’s not me she owes an apology to.”
He shakes his head. “She’s going to have to figure out what a fucker he is by herself. She won’t listen to me.”
“Sometimes we need to make our own mistakes.”
“Yeah, and I’ve been making a lot of them,” he says wearily. I don’t want to ask what he means, but his eyes shoot up to mine. “You know what she said isn’t true, right? You know that’s not how I feel?”
“What do you mean?”
His eyes squeeze together, like it would be easier not to look at me, because he doesn’t want to say whatever he’s about to say.
“That I’m going to return to screwing around.”
He stops, and I stay quiet, because I can see he’s not done. Just wrestling with what he wants to tell me. I’m not going to lie and say that Clementine’s words didn’t feel like a slap to the face, because they did. But also a slap to reality.
It’s becoming harder and harder to remember that Miles and I have a timeframe, and the end date is looming. I don’t want to acknowledge it.
He takes a breath, his hands run up the backs of my legs, stopping just shy of my ass. It takes all my effort to concentrate on his words and not on where his fingers are. Or where I want them to be.
“I’m not incapable of commitment, I just haven’t met anyone I wanted to commit to.” I hold my breath, and my heart pounds as he reaches up and curls a strand of my hair around his finger. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.. .thisthing. I know we agreed that it would last the season, and then...” He pauses, grips my thighs, and forces me down onto his lap so quickly my belly flops. “I need more time. I don’t want this to be over, Ruby. I don’t want this to end when the season does.”
I stare at him and take in his words—like really absorb them. His expression is reserved, and there’s a wariness in his big blue eyes. It’s an odd look on him, someone who’s always so sure of themselves, yet he’s waiting for me to reassure him.
And that’s a powerful thing.
“Miles . . . what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I think we need to go back to the beginning.”
“Aspen?” I tease. Though it’s more for my benefit because I need a second to configure my thoughts and stop my heart from beating out of my chest.
My answer raises a smile. “We can go to Aspen if you want, but that’s not what I meant.” He tugs on his neck, looking so awkward that I want to put him out of his misery. “Shit, Ruby, I’ve never done this before?—”
