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)
It was just the two of us under the canopy, the lake still quiet, sun still rising. My heart thumped loudly in my chest, though, and I swallowed once the shock had faded, somehow finding the courage to take three careful, measured steps toward him.
“Tyler?”
I watched his chest rise and fall with his name on my lips, and he took three steps that matched mine, over and over until we were just a few feet from each other under the pergola’s shelter.
It might have been an hour, us standing there with his eyes steady and focused on mine. Or maybe it was days, me rooted to the spot, chest tight and throat thick with emotion. Perhaps it was a lifetime, and we would always be destined to watch each other from that distance — close enough to feel, yet never close enough to touch.
The necklace of lights that surrounded the lake flickered off, and it was that small change in the atmosphere that seemed to shock us both back to the present moment. I was suddenly self-conscious of my damp hair I’d piled into a bun on top of my head, of my makeup-less face, of the bags I knew had lined my eyes for weeks.
“What are you doing here?” I finally asked, fighting the urge to reach up and fix my hair. I crossed my arms over my chest, instead.
“I came to get my girl.”
A shuttering kick of my heart. A stolen breath.
“What?”
The word was barely a whisper from my lips, but Tyler stood strong and confident before me.
“I didn’t want to let you get on that plane, Jasmine. It was the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life, to sit there in that car and let you go. But I knew that I couldn’t ask you to stay. I knew that this time I had to do everything right.”
I shook my head, his words another language for how much they were lost on me. “I don’t understand.”
Tyler inhaled a slow breath. “You were right, that morning after we slept together. We weren’t thinking. We acted on impulse, not caring for who might be hurt in the process. I thought about what you said every day after that — about Jacob, about Azra, about my sister and my family and the fact that you and I are not just you and I. At least, we haven’t been.”
A small step toward me, one that I felt like a fiery volcano below the earth’s surface.
“But what I thought about most?” he whispered. “Was how you said you loved me. I replayed it a million times — the way your lips formed around the words, the way your eyes were glossed with tears and pain that I’d caused you, the way I felt that declaration so deep inside me that it might as well have been a tattoo on my soul.”
I rolled my lips together as tears pooled in my eyes.
“I don’t know if you still do,” he continued, shrugging. “Hell, I don’t know that I deserve it. But, I love you, too, Jasmine. I have loved you since the first day I saw you walk through the hallways of school that had felt like a prison to me until you came. I loved you when I wasn’t supposed to, when you were my little sister’s best friend, when I claimed you for my own at the worst possible time, and then broke your heart because I was too scared that I couldn’t be the one to help you through everything you were facing.” Tyler got choked up at that, his lips quivering a bit as he regained his composure. “I loved you from across the country, in secret, for years, praying for the day I’d get to see you again and explain everything, and somehow also praying in the next breath that I’d never see you again.”
My heart splintered in my chest, because I knew the exact feeling he was trying to explain. We were shackled to each other like prisoners, but if someone handed one of us the key, we’d hide it and pretend we never had any other option.
“Loving you has been torture,” Tyler said, stepping fully into me now. His hands swept away from his pockets and reached for me, eliciting a wave of chills over my entire body when his skin finally made contact with mine. He palmed my arms, holding me just above the elbows with his dark eyes searching mine. “But it doesn’t have to be anymore.”
My next inhale was shaky, and I went to speak but Tyler beat me to it.
“I couldn’t tell you not to get on that plane because I knew I had to take care of so many things before we could be together — truly together — without anyone or anything else between us. I had to explain things to Azra. She deserved that from me. And I had to talk to Morgan, and to Mom and Dad, and, if I’m being honest, I had to sit down and have a long talk with myself, too.”