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“Mom, don’t. You know I needed to leave.”
“You thought you had to leave, but your entire support system is here,” she said, reverting to her favorite argument. “It was a rash decision that was made when you couldn’t make sound decisions.”
“I met someone,” I blurted out before she could continue.
I went back to the window, unable to resist the urge to check outside as silence once again met me.
“I hadn’t realized you were ready for that,” she said after long seconds had passed, that worry even stronger than before.
“I didn’t think I was,” I admitted. “And I wasn’t looking, but he’s...”
Incredible. Unpredictable. More than anything I could’ve ever imagined. Infuriating. Confusing.
“Tree.”
Here...he’s here!
A heated shiver raced across my skin as I dropped the blinds and whirled around, barely managing to stifle my surprised excitement when I saw Diggs locking my front door behind him.
Because as much as I’d wanted this for days, as much as my heart had just been racing at the mere thought of him when I’d been preparing to tell my mom the vaguest details about him, I needed Diggs to stop doing this.
I needed him to stop choosing when to be in my life. I needed him to stop appearing, just to keep me at a distance. Giving me the smallest glimpse of hope and showing me his need for us, only to remind me in whatever way that we couldn’t be together.
“Mom, I have to go.” The words came out soft as a breath and slightly shaky as I watched Diggs clear the space between us with long, sure strides.
“What about this boy?” she asked, sounding taken aback by my abrupt change in tone and urgency.
“Later,” I promised her. “I just—someone from school’s calling. I’ll talk to you later. Love you.”
I hung up before she could argue and felt my excitement deflate when Diggs stopped a noticeable distance away, studying his feet and then mine for a moment as if he were gauging the distance. As if he needed it.
“We need to talk.”
A defeated sound left me at those simple yet telling words.
Lowering my head so he wouldn’t see how much they bothered me, I started moving in his direction and then past him, letting my phone fall to the couch as I did. “Since when do you use the front door?”
“Someone’s more likely to see me climbing in here in the early evening than the middle of the night. I don’t need cops coming after me right now.”
“Just right now?” I challenged gently, earning an uneasy laugh from him. When I reached the front door, I turned to lean against it in time to see Diggs rubbing at his jaw, the same noticeable distance away from me as before.
“Sounds like you talked to Aurora.”
“Rorie? No,” I said with a shrug, then unlocked the deadbolt he’d just latched. “Just trying to figure you out.”
His gray stare inspected the door before snapping back to me and narrowing in obvious worry and question. “If you’re trying to tell me something, I’d rather you just say it, Tree.”
“I said what I needed to this morning,” I reminded him. “Now you’re here to talk, which is never good for any relationship—even one as unconventional as ours. So, I’m just preparing for when you leave again.”
His head shook as he took the last remaining steps toward me. Towering over me as he reached out and grasped the deadbolt, sending it home with a resounding click. “I’m here because I can’t seem to stay away from you. I’m here to talk to see if you can handle who I am.”
A heaving breath rushed from me at the confession. “I can,” I said confidently. “I don’t know who or what you are, but I know you.”
“You don’t,” he argued over me. “And the thing is, I don’t want you to because I don’t want you to stop looking at me the way you—” In an instant, everything about Diggs changed.
His body stilled and eyes glazed over, but for as blank as his expression was, it was fascinating to see how the subtle differences changed him completely.
The calculative look behind his faraway stare. The rage beneath his firm jaw. The intrigue overwhelming it all in the slightest tilt of his head.
