Page 66

Story: Before & After You

But what did that mean?

“I fell for you, too,” he said, and his words stopped traffic. The thoughts and sentences and images that traveled through my mind in a blur just—halted.

“What?” I whispered, my breaths coming deep and fast. He always did that, made my mind spin and my heart race,and it felt like I was floating, right up and outside of myself.Was he actually saying what I thought he was saying?

“I tried.” He swallowed, stepping even closer, sliding his hand into my hair and landing at the base of my neck. “I triedreallyhard to keep it from happening, but you made it too fucking easy to fall in love with you.”

My eyes watered, threatening to spill over. Becauseholy shit,but I never thought I’d hear those words come out of his mouth. They had looked so good, too, on his lips.

And his hand was now in my hair, and he was standing zero inches away from me, and I wanted to take the adoring way he was looking at me and bottle up the way it made me feel: like I’d found a slice of magic in an ordinary world—in my world.

But that same world around me grew dark without my permission. My sun hid behind heavy clouds, and rain started to pour while thunder sounded in the distance, because I was smart enough to realize…that just because he’d fallen for me, too, it didn’t mean that anything between us could change.

Fifty-eight Before

THE HOURGLASS WASstill bleeding sand from one glass orb to the other. Our time was still running out. He was still leaving.

We still couldn’t be together.

I pulled away from the bubble he’d sucked me into. His bubble of:We fell for each other, and that’s all that really matters right now.Because it wasn’t all that mattered.

What the hell had I been thinking, spilling my guts like that back there? Making it so obvious how I felt about him?

I know I definitely hadn’t been thinking that he felt the same way. It wasn’t even in my realm of possibility.

Likedme, sure. I knew that much was obvious. I’d have been an idiot not to have seen it. But he had areallyeffective way of shielding anything much deeper than that.

My mind spun for the second time in as many minutes.

This is a cruel, cruel fucking joke, Universe.I laughed darkly.

Greyson’s eyes narrowed. “What’s so funny?” he asked. His guard had gone back up, too.

I hadn’t meant to laugh.But seriously, God?

“It just figures…” I said. “That I would finally get what I want without actually being able to have it.”

He stepped closer, shaking his head. “That’s what I’m trying—”

I stepped away from him again. “I guess that’s one of life’s greatest jokes, though, isn’t it?” I interrupted. He took another step towards me, fingers brushing my arm as I moved another foot back. “Handing out love at the absolute worst of times,” I finished, lost in a world of my own thoughts.

“I don’t think so,” he disagreed, and I pulled my attention back to him, studying every curve and line of his face. I could see that he meant it. He was insane. “If anything, I’d say it’s the opposite. That it’s one of life’s greatest gifts…

“…It’s when shit is at its worst that we need love most.”

I let his words tumble around in my mind. Let them sink into my consciousness, tasted them on my tongue.

They were bullshit.

“No.” I shook my head, the weight of our conversation fully hitting me. “I don’twantto be here. I don’t want to feel this way—I don’t want to love you, when I can’t have you.” Andfuck,but I knew I was going to cry if I stood here one second longer.

“You have me. That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” he implored. “You have me.”

“No, I don’t!” I yelled, loathing the tear that rolled down my cheek. “Not forever. Not in the ways that I want to. Not inanyof the ways that matter,” I finished softly, my heart aching.

That made him angry. His jaw clenched, again and again, his hand balling into a tight fist and releasing. He stepped right into my space. “This?” he gestured between the two of us, taking a deep breath, “What we have here? It matters to me—a fucking lot.”

“Right,” I breathed.That’s why you pushed, and pushed, and pushed me away this entire time.I wiped away another tear. “I’d say prove it, but—” He gripped the back of my neck, pulling my body flush to his, and smashed his lips against mine.Bruising.Consuming.