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“Reveled in the enormity of that ocean,” he finishes my sentence, and I remember how neither of us had ever seen nor felt anything so significant. The magic of that ocean is long gone, and so are those two kids who sat on the beach mystified by it.
Jack stops in front of me, and even in the darkness, the blue of his eyes pierce into me, tears welling, and I want to swallow them whole.
When he steps closer to me, I don’t stop him.
When he touches my cheek, I let him.
When he presses his forehead to mine, I breathe him in.
He is intoxicating. Just the scent of him, the way his hand not only touches my skin but seems to penetrate something deep inside of me… The heat permeating outward and flowing down my body makes me shiver.
“I can’t help that I love you.” His breath tickles my cheek. “If that makes me a bad person, then I will gladly go to hell for it.” His voice is low and gruff.
A tear escapes and falls down my cheek. I close my eyes to stop the rest from falling, but nothing can stop the crack from expanding in my heart.
“I know.” I can’t help that I love him, too. If life has taught me anything, it’s that just because you can have something, doesn’t mean you should.
“It doesn’t change anything. We’ve hurt too many people,” I tell him.
“I want to be with you.” I can feel his body tremble against mine like the fluttering of a leaf in the breeze.
“Not like this,” I whisper and shake my head.
One of us has to be rational.
“Look at what we’ve done.” I blink, feeling my eyelashes flutter against his skin.
Amber is heartbroken and she’ll take Hayley from him if she hasn’t already done so. Cash is devastated. There is no more Mogo because of Jack and me. We did this. To be with him now would be selfish, and I don’t want to be that person anymore.
“I don’t care. I’ve always only wanted you, Mia. I love you so much I would burn down the fucking world just to have you.” I try not to focus on the tremble of his lips against my skin. It’s torture standing so close to him, feeling him, breathing him in… but that’s what he’s counting on.
“That’s the problem,” I explain.
Tears stream down my cheeks like rain against a windowpane. My lower lip trembles as I rest my nose against his, breathing him in for one last time. I want to memorize every line on his face.
“Tell me you don’t love me,” he demands. This is too much for one person to handle.
“I can’t.” I grip the collar of his jacket so tight I think I might tear it away from him.
“Why does it have to be so complicated?” Those ocean blue eyes of his swim with emotion as they gaze at me.
We were always complicated. From the moment he first wrote in my journal and kept it secret from everyone else, we sealed our fate.
“I need you to let me go,” I beg, the words coming out stronger than I thought I was capable of.
“You know I can’t do that,” he growls.
I want to say that I wish he had never run into Amber that night so many years ago, but then Hayley wouldn’t have been born. She is his world. I can’t help that every time I see him with her it breaks my heart, because I wish it had been with me. I wish we had better timing, but I can’t change what has already happened. The thought drowns me and I am sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
“Then I will walk away for the both of us.” I muster every last bit of strength I have in me to say it.
Jack grips the back of my head, his fingers fisting my hair, and I know he doesn’t want to let me go just as much as I don’t want him to either, but it’s the way it has to be.
“I can’t let you go,” he whispers into my hair, placing a kiss on top of my head. “I won’t ever let you go.”
“I know.” I let my lips brush against his, the feeling causing me to sag against him as every nerve ending lights up in my body. For a few seconds we are at an impasse, unable to move, a hairs breadth between our lips, until we finally touch.
The kiss is so achingly slow and devastatingly beautiful that a piece of me is lost to him forever. I can taste the salt of his tears, and I swallow them with a kiss. He takes my face in his hands and I place my hands over his, holding us together as if I were to let go, we would fall apart.
