Page 70 of Wherever You Are

But tension still strains.

“What do you need from me?” Garrison asks, knowing he’s wedged an invisible force between us.

“I need you to tell me that you won’t leave me because you think you’re not good enough,” I say. “I need you to believe that you are. And maybe you can’t give me that now, but one day.”

“I won’t ever fucking leave you,” he tells me like those words are already cemented down.

But he’ll push me away, force me to be the one to leave him. I know this—it’s why the second part is so important.

“Do you believe that you’re good enough for me?”

“Have I ever believed that?” he counters.

No, I don’t think so.

I say, “Maybe you’re just forgetting that I’m not as great as you think.” I lower my voice. “Not only did I take money from my dad—which I said I’d never do—but I’m lying to Ryke and Lo about it. That’s not exactly Girl Scout levels of good.”

His lips lift into a big smile.

I pale. “What?”

“You’re cute,” he tells me. “You think lying to Ryke and Lo is this enormous crime against humanity, but it’s fucking normal. People lie. I’ve done a lot worse. You wanna compare?” He winds an arm around my shoulder, and his eyes ask,can I?

I nod.

And he tugs me onto his lap, my legs naturally spreading open and weaving around his waist. I hang onto his shoulders and ask, “How do you know I’ve never spray painted someone’s house? I could’ve had a rebellious streak back in Maine.”

His brows rise. “I would havedefinitelyalready heard all about that.” He tucks a loose strand of my braid behind my ear. “There’s no way you wouldn’t have gushed about spray painting houses and streaking down the roads.”

“I never said anything about streaking.” I blush just imagining doing something that brazen.

“I embellished your embellishment.”

The fact that we’re so different—his past muddled with bad deeds and mine relatively spotless—is what causes most of our friction. Whoever said opposites attract, well, they were right, but they forgot to mention how many strings are weaved and knotted between that attraction.

We’re complicated, but as long as we’re together, I don’t care what we are.

I reroute to the earlier point. “It is a big lie, though,” I say softly. Keeping this from Ryke and Lo is difficult, and I don’t know what’s worse: them finding out Jonathan gave me money to bury the footage of the fight or them finding out I kept it a secret in the first place.

“I know,” Garrison nods, not downplaying the situation. “It’s a big deal.”

16PRESENT DAY – February

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

GARRISON ABBEY

Age 22

Two months pass in a blink. Willow and I keep the secret, and Jonathan isn’t brought up much at the Hale house, making it easier.

It’s also been two months since I’ve seen Willow in person, which is starting to get to me. We’ve talked about marriage and babies and begun to map out a future. Doing that has changed me a little bit. I want what we imagined together. One baby. Marriage.Soon-ish.

God, I want it.

But it’s not going to happen if we can’t see each other for months on end, so I came up with a plan.

And it could go really bad. It’s what I know as I wait for 3 p.m. to hit at Cobalt Inc.