Page 108 of Until You

And yet here we are.

A girl who’s never going to leave here, whose secrets remain untold. And a boy who doesn’t know how to feel any other way for a woman who seemingly jumpstarted his heart again.

Maybe it’s the finality of the night. Founder’s Day. The celebration of the end of summer. Of getting one day closer to packing up and leaving for home. For Chicago.

But is it still home to me?

Or is this house here, the one I’ve put time in, the one I’ve heard my girls giggle and huff in, the one I’ve sat many nights on the porch with Tenny’s head on my shoulder watching the sunset . . . the one that feels more like home?

“You want to tell me what you’re thinking about?” Tenny whispers in my ear as color explodes overhead.

“You.”

“Me?” She smiles, and before she can say another word, I slant my lips over hers.

I don’t care who’s around or who’s watching or that we’re in the middle of a goddamn fireworks show. I take the kiss I want. The kiss I need. The one that tells her everything my words have lacked.

And when the kiss is done, when the moment should have passed but only feels so much more powerful, I rest my forehead against hers. “I love you, Tenny. I didn’t think I had it in me to love again, but I do. And I have.”

Her hands tense on my shoulders. Her breath hitches as she shakes her head back and forth, physically rejecting what I’ve said while her eyes tell me she knows. That she loves me too.

“Don’t say that, Crew. Please.” She presses a kiss to my lips that is in such contradiction to her words my chest aches. “I can’t give you what you need. What you deserve.”

I take her hands in mine and squeeze gently so that she looks back at me again.

The fear is there. It swims with love, and I don’t know how to conquer that. I don’t know how to right wrongs that someone else caused other than to be patient.

Even if it fucking kills me.

“You’re telling me you don’t feel the same? All it takes is a simple shake of the head to tell me otherwise.”

“I told you before that I don’t want to lie to you . . . so I’m not going to answer that.”

She didn’t shake her head. She might not be able to say the words, but she sure as shit didn’t shake her head.

A smile tugs on the corners of my mouth as relief—and even more love—flows through me at her non-answer answer. Just like our official first non-fight fight.

I’ll take that.

The question is . . . what in the fuck am I going to do with it?

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Tennyson

When the house is asleep, I stand at Crew’s doorway and watch him sleep, his words from earlier tonight on constant replay through my mind.

“I love you, Tenny. I didn’t think I had it in me to love again, but I do. And I have.”

The expression on his face. The look in his eyes. The words on his lips. All three own me. Own my heart. And kill me silently knowing I can’t tell him I feel the same.

I do.

God, do I.

But if I were to voice the words, if I were to tell him how I really feel—that I’ve fallen just as hard for him—then it would only make what I have to do that much harder on a man who’s already been abandoned once.

What’s crueler? To tell him I love him, a man who didn’t think he had it in him to love again, and then to push him away? Or to love him silently, never saying the words, so it’s easier on him when we part ways?