Page 83 of On the Way to You
When his jeans were on, he yanked the zipper up, turning on me with heat rolling off him in waves of steam. “You know how I felt about who Ithoughtyou were. I don’t fucking know you, Cooper.”
His words sliced through me, my heart bleeding out in front of him.
“You know me,” I whispered. “You know me more than anyone else. And I know you. And I lo—“
“DON’T,” he roared, shoving the last of his belongings in his bag before slinging it over his shoulder. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence. You don’t love me, you don’t know me, and you don’t get tothinkeither of those things just because you read the thoughts I’ve written in that book.” He swallowed, his voice breaking at the end. “Youliedto me.”
“And you lied to me, too!”
He froze at that, only his chest moving with his heavy breaths, his nose flaring. The same guilt that seeped through me crept across his face then, both of us caught in the sticky goo of truth. We weren’t perfect. We didn’t mean to hurt each other, and yet it was all we’d done.
I took a step forward, my hand finding his forearm. He didn’t flinch, so I wrapped my fingers around his warm skin, praying he’d feel me in that moment.
“We messed up, both of us. But we can start over. Just… let me in, and I promise, I will never lie to you again. We can make it through this.Youcan make it through this.” I sniffed, squeezing his arm. “Please, just trust me. Believe me.”
His eyes found mine then, the gold shaded with doubt, and his face twisted as he pulled his arm from my grasp. “How can I?”
And there it was, the gust of wind that broke what fragile house we’d built. The blizzard came quick and without warning on the heels of a day of sunshine.
I’d lost him.
“You’re close enough to Seattle, I think you can figure it out from here.” He ripped his eyes from mine, adjusting his bag on his shoulder as I reached for him again, his name rolling off my tongue over and over again, each time more desperate than the last. “Don’t follow me.”
He broke our connection, slamming the door closed behind him as I fell to my knees. The most painful scream of my life shredded my vocal chords as I cried out for him one last time, face collapsing into my cold hands when I realized it wasn’t enough to bring him back. I crawled to the door, using the handle to climb to my feet, opening it with numb awareness as my heart beat in my ears.
Thump.
My bare feet in the snow, Emery shutting the trunk.
Thump.
My voice muted by the snow, Emery’s hand on the wheel.
Thump.
Our eyes connecting, memories striking me like a whip.
Thump.
My knees hitting the snow, vision fading to black as the car drives away, taking my bruised and bleeding heart with it.
He left just the same as he’d come, all at once, never expected, a tide that washed me clean before leaving me raw and bare in its wake. He’d asked me that first day what made me happy, but I couldn’t answer him. Now that I finally could, he was too far away to hear.
“You,” I whispered, the truth of it cracking the last whole piece of my heart, and then everything went dark.
Time.
Such a simple word. Such a complicated concept.
I’d had so much of it,toomuch of it, wasting away in that small town that I couldn’t wait to leave. I didn’t even notice the ticking of the clock on the wall while I worked at the diner, never considered how many days had passed each time a new birthday rolled around. I didn’t even acknowledge time until the day I left that town, until the day I met Emery.
Then, time became a living, breathing, moving thing.
And it was entirely too fast.
I’d tried to hold onto it, to spread it out like jam. I wanted to taste every second, live inside each moment forever and then race to the next to see what waited for me there. Time had started, it had kicked to life with the force of a million years of waiting, shaking off rust and spreading its wings like it was born to do.
But now, that speed that I marveled at was my worst enemy.