Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
“But you already knew you were going to break up with Jacob.”
“Yes.”
“And you still want Tyler. You still love him.”
“Yes,” I whispered, wincing at the painful shrinking of my heart.
Aunt Laura let out a long sigh, and she tugged on my hands until I was upright again and facing her. She held my hands in hers, staring at where our fingers locked together with a strange smile on her face.
“You know, you remind me of your mother sometimes. Of when she was younger.”
My throat was sticky and dry, emotion strangling me at her words. Part of me leaned into it, longing to hear more about how I was like the woman who had made me. The other part of me wanted to scream and throw things, to never speak about the woman who had left me.
“How so?”
“She always put others before herself,” Aunt Laura said, but a knowing laugh puffed from her nose. “But not always in the right way. She just always felt like she knew what was best for everyone she loved, and once she made up her mind, that was it. There was no talking her out of it. You could tell her what you wanted, what you needed, but if she saw it another way, there was no convincing her. She’d think you were lying to save her emotions, or trying to make her life easier.” She shook her head. “My sister made life hard for herself, harder than it needed to be, all under the pretense of helping others.”
My stomach knotted, and I thought about what I could remember of my mom, of the choices she made, not just for herself, but for us as a family unit.
“What I’m trying to say is that you only have two choices here, Jazzy,” Aunt Laura said, bending to look me in the eyes. “You either fight for Tyler, or you let him go.”
I shook my head. “But I can’t—”
“You have a choice,” she argued before I could get my sentence out. “Whether it’s an easy one to make or not is a completely different story, but the decision is not already made for you. There are consequences on either side of this, whether you run to him or walk away from him forever. But all I ask is that you don’t make the decision based on what you think he wants or needs, or on what you think will be better for his family, or for Azra, or for anyone else. You can’t project what you don’t know for sure. And making a decision based on possible negative outcomes only puts fear in the driver’s seat of your life, my girl.” She paused, shaking her head. “Trust me when I say you don’t want that.”
I rolled my lips together, looking out the window over the dark ocean before I found my aunt’s gaze again. “What do I do? Which one is the right choice?”
“I can’t answer that for you,” she said softly, regrettably. “Only you can. And like I said, there’s no easy right or wrong, no simple path on the other side of whatever decision you do make. You just have to decide which one you want to walk, and whether you want to walk it alone, or with him.”
“And if he denies me?”
Aunt Laura shrugged, and I almost laughed, because it was somehow painstakingly funny that I was in this situation.
There was no answer to be handed to me on a gold platter, no magic words to make everything okay. And even after my aunt had kissed me on the cheek and left my room to go to her own, I lie awake on top of my bedspread with my eyes on the ceiling, thinking over all she’d said, over all I’d been through, over all the different factors that played into the two paths I could take from this moment on.
I didn’t know what to do.
That was the plain, stupid truth of it. I felt my soul ripped in half, in two equal, shredded parts — one pulling me toward walking away from Tyler and leaving him to his happiness with Azra, and one yanking me toward throwing myself at his feet and begging him to walk away from everything safe and comfortable, and fall right into sin with me.
I loved him enough to let him go, and that was what felt right to me.
But I also loved him enough to be selfish, to keep him for my own — consequences be damned.
The sick thing was that I could close my eyes and see both paths play out in living color. I could see me leaving Tyler and this town behind again, going back to California, rebuilding, finding myself, moving on.
I could see me running to him, him breaking Azra’s heart, his family casting their disappointed stares on us, and us working to re-earn their trust.