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)
I knew it would hurt, but I had to jump, anyway.
“Sometimes, I wish I’d never met you,” I whispered.
Tyler swallowed, his hands wrapping around the steering wheel as if he was debating driving away before I could even bail out of the car.
I looked at him. “I do. There were so many nights over the last seven years that I lay awake thinking of you, knowing you weren’t thinking of me, cursing myself for being so wrapped up in someone so unaffected by me. I wished I could go back to that first day of Bridgechester Prep and sit somewhere else during lunch. I wished I would have become best friends with Riley Horn, or Becca Martinez, or literally anyone but you and Morgan.
“But then I think of a time we shared together, of a night we stayed up too late or a day we wasted hours making up a music video to our favorite song, or a week lost in the sun by the lake during a summer when time didn’t have limitations the way it does now. And it’s then that I know even if I had the choice, I’d still go back and sit with you, and I’d still spend every waking hour with you and Morgan.” I paused. “And I’d still lean into your kiss that day my mom left, when I went looking for Morgan and found you, instead.”
Tyler blew out a slow, long breath, his hands gripping the steering wheel tighter.
“I know this isn’t right,” I continued. “I know we shouldn’t have done what we did. And maybe I shouldn’t have said what I said last night, either. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying all of this that I’m saying to you now.” I turned a little in my seat then, so I could face him fully, begging him to return my gaze. “But it doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong. This is how I feel.”
Tyler swallowed, his neck straining with the motion.
“I want you, Tyler,” I whispered through the tears building, and at the words, his mouth parted, his chest depressing with the trembling breath. “I always have, and I always will. I’ve tried to forget you, and I know now that there is no amount of time or distance I can put between us that will ever allow me to. I am yours,” I said, and I felt so bold with the truth on my lips that I reached for him, wrapping my hand around his on the steering wheel until he let me pull it free. I held it between mine, his elbow balanced on the center console between us, and he kept his gaze forward while I lowered my lips to his fingers and closed my eyes. “Whether you claim me or not, I am yours.”
A single tear slipped down his cheek when I opened my eyes to look at him again, but he wouldn’t blink to set another free. He just looked straight ahead, his eyes tired, his jaw set.
“I know I am not in the position to ask anything of you, not after I took what I thought was the righteous route and insisted that what we had done was wrong. I pushed you away the morning after you’d pulled me in. I felt it in my heart that Azra was the one for you, that your family loved her, that you loved her, and I couldn’t step in the middle of that.” I paused, heart squeezing with the admission. “But I’m asking you now.”
I reached for his chin, running my fingers over the slight stubble there until he finally turned to face me. His nostrils flared when our eyes locked, two more tears freeing themselves, and his chest heaving at the touch.
“If you feel anything for me, Tyler,” I whispered, searching his eyes. “If you love me, too — don’t let me get on this plane.”
A thick swallow found his throat again, and his eyes washed over me, taking me in, drinking my words. I saw a million things in that gaze of his, felt a thousand lifetimes of us warring with that truth I’d just spilled between us. He and I, we weren’t just here and now. We were the past, the present, the future. We were other worlds and other universes, too.
No matter what we did, it would always come back to this.
Every molecule of my being was tied up in that moment, in the request that hung between us on a delicate wire. I held his hand between mine, watching, waiting, wishing.
His hand squeezed mine, and I inhaled a deep, shaky breath at the contact, leaning into it.
But in the next breath, he released me completely, taking his shaky hands back to the wheel and his gaze back to the windshield.
I didn’t miss the way his throat constricted, the way his nose flared, the way his lips were pressed together so tight that little lines formed around them.