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I look down at my bare feet pressed against the wooden floor.
Two days. We leave in two days.
God.
“I know you didn’t mean it,” I say, and I realize how much I truly mean it, too. “I appreciate you saying that, but I—”
“Not that it’s any excuse,” he cuts in again, “but I was in bad fucking headspace. Answering the phone and hearing that Parker and Williams had been in an accident, it brought me right back—” he clips off with a harsh breath, not finishing his sentence. But somehow, he already knows that I know, that I understand, because it brought me right back, too. Sitting outside the hospital, the terrified look on Addy’s face, the panic on Jude’s, not knowing how badly hurt Parker and Williams were, it ripped me straight through time, back to five years ago when I lost Quinn.
A lump forms in my throat, thick and heavy.
“But you were right, you know,” he continues, quietly. I meet his gaze, and his stare digs deeper into mine. “I made a promise four years ago I can no longer keep. It isn’t my responsibility to make sure everyone around me is okay, or that they’re being responsible and not making the same stupid fucking decision to get behind the wheel when—” he cuts himself off again, sucking a sharp breath into his lungs. He closes his eyes for a brief moment, before opening them again to find mine. “I see thatnow.” He steps closer, reaching for my elbows with his hands and pulling me closer, too. His voice lowers, softer than I’ve ever heard it before when he says, “But even coming to that realization, I still find myself needing to make sure you’re okay.”
“You called me a distraction, Jude.” I don’t know why I say the words when they don’t matter. But they do. They do matter.
“Youarea distraction,” he grits, and my heart splinters with his dark tone. “A distraction from the fucked parts of my mind and the shit things that have happened to me. Declan, you’re the kind of distraction a personneeds.”
Oh.
Oh.
The tears that have stung at the back of my eyes during this entire conversation rush forward. His words are destructive, tearing down every crumbling piece of wall I’ve tried to build between us this week, blocking out the idea of us staying friends, of continuing to build on the understanding and connection we’ve found in each other this summer, of allowing my feelings to grow any deeper than the soiled depths they’ve already managed to root themselves into.
“I care about you, Little D.So fucking much,”Jude doesn’t stop, laying confession after confession at my feet. “More than I’ve cared about someone in a long damn time. And while I can’t pretend to understand what that means for us right now, I know it means something. I want to keep in touch; I want to see where this,” he motions between us, before grasping the hem of my sleep shirt and dragging me closer, “could go. Because it has the potential to go somewhere, and I know you feel that, too.”
My heart races so fast its pulses pound through my limbs in a rhythm that makes it feel like the earth is rattling beneath my feet. It takes me a startling breath, a stuttering moment, to realize it’s only my heart that’s beating. That I’m standing onthe solid hardwood floor of the upstairs hallway, Jude’s stare rooting me in place where I’m pressed against him.
I swallow thickly as his gray stare penetrates deeper, grasping my heart in its clutches and slowing its beats. As easy as that. Like he somehow always manages to do.
And I want to sayyes, I do.But I’m not sure I have the capacity to make that admission. To decipher between the chaos in my mind and the raging in my heart, screaming two very opposite things.
When I look at him—at his intense stare, and the Adam’s apple slowly sliding up and down his throat, and his lips fighting against the pull of a hesitant smile—I only feel… hopeful.
But the thought of carrying hope for anything beyond the friendship we’ve built is terrifying, because I’ve learned that you can only hold onto hope for so long before something comes along to shatter it, this last week only providing further proof that it’s true, and while you can pick up the pieces and try to glue them back together again, hope will forever be a fragile thing once it’s been broken. I know that hoping for anything more than what lies immediately ahead of me has the potential to break my fragile hope for good, and for Quinn’s sake, and my own, I’m not sure I can take that risk. I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll be torn apart completely.
I squeeze my eyes shut, pinching them closed.
Every ounce of me screams that I want this—my thoughts racing, my heart clenching, my soul aching. But my mind has always screamed the loudest. Every fear, every doubt. And my thoughts…they win again.
“I want to stay in touch, too, Jude. I do.” My chest is shaky, my breaths uneven. “But I don’t have the strength to hope for anything more than that right now. That kind of hope has the potential to break me, and forhim,I have to get my life together, I have to fight for something better, I have to…”
He pushes a hand through his hair. He knows. Of course, he knows. “For Quinn,” he confirms quietly. “You’ll do it for Quinn. And I’ll do it for Brenna.
“But Declan, Iwillknow you well enough to see it all unfold.”
And those are the parting words he leaves me with.
Chapter Sixteen
Declan
“I cannot believe this is our last movie night of the summer.” Addy pouts with wide, pitiful eyes, and it makes Cal and Stacy smile. Snacks are laid out across the massive coffee table in front of us, oversized blankets covering every inch of the couch, and we all snuggle in beneath them.
The lights in the living room are turned all the way down, the opening credits ofLabyrinthfilling the screen. It’s our favorite movie—mine and Addy’s—introduced to us a few years ago by Stacy, and it’s been the last movie we’ve watched during my visits ever since. It’s that fact that brings home, more than anything else these last few days, that the end of our summer is here.
Emotion weeds through my chest and climbs into my throat.
Addy shifts closer, snuggling into my side. Cal and Stacy cuddle into each other further, too. And my heart grows three times its size with an overwhelming sense of… home. Of family.