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I wanted nothing more than to be with her, but I knew that would just fuck me up more. I’d hurt her by making her go on that trip. I’d hurt her, even though the storm and the accidents weren’t my fault.
Now that we were out of danger, I had to stop seeing her, and that would hurt her, too.
I’d been so sure that I was the one playing with fire when I’d gotten involved with her, attempting to win over the kitten whose claws were always out. I’d never thought for a second about what it would do to her, and now I felt like the fucked up villain in the story, the guy who’d ruin everything that had been perfect about her life.
I wasn’t right for her, and I wasn’t going to stick around to make things worse. It was time I bowed out and let Celine be who she was without pushing her to be different.
It was time to walk away.
The very thought felt like a punch to the gut. Whenever I thought about Celine, I felt warm and tingly all over, and whenever I thought about losing her, it felt like I was suffocating all over again.
This was how it had to be, though. Eventually, I would recover. I walked away from her once before and I’d survived, right? I could do it again.
You didn’t love her the way you do now,a small voice told me, but I squashed that shitty voice of reason and decided that my plan was the best one there was.
“Where did they find us?” I asked Gino when we sat in the plane, heading home again. “How far out were we?”
“Almost two-hundred miles down the mountain from the campsite,” Gino said. “They started looking from where you guys presumably got washed away and circled out, but you could have gone in any direction. I figured you would follow the water.”
“That’s exactly what we did,” I said.
“The rain cut us short and washed away so much of the landscape, we were starting to panic you were dead.”
I shuddered at the thought of what we’d been through.
“If it wasn’t for everything we used to do as kids, we might have been,” I said.
I told Gino about the hunt, the cabin, the way we’d had to double back a few times and never found anything that was a semblance of life. Gino listened, shaking his head from time to time. It was hard to believe all of this was true. I could barely believe it and I’d been there.
“I’m just glad you’re back,” Gino said.
I nodded. I was glad, too. I was glad it was over and we were okay.
“Do you know how she is?” I asked, glancing at Gino.
“Last I heard, they’d put her on antibiotics and saline, and they took her to the hospital to have her ankle checked out. Didn’t you call to follow up?”
I shook my head. “As long as we’re okay and I know she’s taken care of, it will be fine.”
Gino narrowed his eyes at me. “I thought you were more serious about her than that.”
I shrugged. “You were the one who told me not to get too serious, right?”
“Yeah, but since when do you listen to me?” Gino asked with half a grin on his face. His eyes were serious, though, studying my face for a sign that he was right about how I felt about her.
He was right in a lot of ways. What I felt about her was more than anything I’d felt for anyone, but if I told Gino how I really felt about her, I knew what he would say. She wasn’t Italian. He would ask me if she was worth giving it all up for, and I would tell her I didn’t know.
All I knew was that she’d gotten hurt because of me, she’d been taken out of her world because of me, and I wasn’t going to keep doing that to her. It was better that we both stayed in the worlds we belonged in. I’d learned a lot about myself and about the way life was in the forest with her, and it was time to man the fuck up and accept what could and couldn’t be.
Gino finally looked away, and I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I flashed on Celine but I pushed the thought of her out of my mind.
It was time to distance myself from her, to stop aching for her, and move forward with my life.
When we arrived in LA, Zio Alfredo was there himself to pick us up.
“My boys,” he said, and he was as emotional as me and my brother. “I thought I lost you.” He held onto us, and we stood together, ignoring the fact that we were three grown men hugging it out. It was just good to be with my family and to be alive.
“How is the girl?” Zio Alfredo asked when we walked to the car.
