Page 101 of Unlocked Dive

“Where are you going? Isn’t it late out there?”

I’m chasing you.

“I’m headed home.”

“From a hot date?”

“What? No. Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think anymore. I haven’t heard from you since you turned me the fuck out the other morning. I thought maybe I pissed you off by leaving. Or that you regretted it.”

“I sent you the video. Did that look like me regretting anything?”

“No,” he admits. “But then where have you been for the last three days?”

“I’ve been doing some thinking.”

“Sounds ominous. Good thinking or bad thinking?”

“Hard thinking. About stuff I should have told you weeks ago.”

“I’m not sure I can handle any more of your confessions.”

“Too bad. You’re gonna listen to this one.”

“I’m almost to campus. Do I need to turn around?”

“Just give me five minutes, and then I’ll let you go, I promise.”

“I hate it when you let me go.”

“Fuck, baby. Iknow. That’s why I need to say this, okay?”

“Okay.”

Now that he’s listening, my hands are shaking on the wheel, and the smear of oncoming traffic sets off a pike of panic behind my eyes.

“Coen?”

I fucking love it when he calls me that, the syllables somehow softer and more vivid from his tongue. I love that he’s resurrected something from my life before Gabriel, and how he’s claimed it as his own.

“I never knew I could want something the way I wanted you,” I blurt, unable to hold back any longer. “It made me stupid when I should have been brave, and reckless when I should have been strong. It made me want to keep pieces of you for myself when I’ve only ever been good at giving things away.

“I didn’t know what to do with those feelings, Echo, so I decided the only way to have you and still leave you intact was to make you temporary. For your sake even more than mine. I convinced myself that if you weretemporary, then my past didn’t matter. Mysecretsdidn’t matter. Because I was afraid that if you found them out, you’d disappear before I was ready to let you go.”

“I—”

“But then you found out, and you not onlystayed, you kept right on loving me. And even though it was what I hoped for, it scared the fucking shit out of me. I realized if you’d let me hurt you that much and still forgive me, then you mightneverleave. And how badly I wantedthatparalyzed me.” I press a palm to my chest, breathing hard, as the taillights in front of me run together like blood on still water. “I couldn’t let myself be that man.”

“Iknow, Coen,” he says, tinged with frustration, and I blink back to warm leather sticky at my back and the hum of the 4-Runner’s AC.

“You know?”

“You think I fell in love with you without learning who you are? You think I would have let you drive me away if I could have stayed without destroying you?” The helpless urgency inhis voice threatens to unravel me. “But none of those things are excuses. You should have known me just as well. You should have trusted me to make my own decisions, even if they scared you. Why did you assume I’d make the wrong ones? You might have been clueless at my age, but we’ve already established I’m the emotionally mature one in this relationship. Situation. Whatever.” He sighs, uncertainty oozing from the pause that follows. “Isthis still a relationship, Coen?”

The most important one I’ve ever had.But his opinion is the one that matters.

“Do you want it to be?” I definitely shouldn’t be driving. I can hardly feel the pedal under my foot, and the highway is a blur through the windshield. Rolling down the window, I suck in brine and diesel and wish I could see his face.