“You know why,” I whispered, sealing my eyes closed. “Stop pretending like you don’t. Stop with the questions. You know.”
I heard his breaths behind me, slow and steady. “I know what?”
I went to clamp my mouth closed, but it was too late. “Why we’re here now. Together.”
I didn’t hear his breathing for a while after that. “I need you to give me your explanation for that, because I have my own ideas, but I’d like to hear yours first.”
It was late. I was tired. And life was short.
Those were the reasons why I wound up giving him my answer, despite knowing it should have remained a secret I took with me to the hereafter. “It doesn’t seem to matter how far away I go or how many years go by. I’m starting to accept that there will always be some part of me that is going to hold on to some part of you.” I just barely glanced over my shoulder to make sure he was still there. He was. “And you’re here right now, saying these hurtful things, trying to push me away, because some part of you has held on to some part of me too.”
Boone remained frozen behind me, his breathing silent. The night seemed to circle in tighter around us, relentless. The longer he stayed quiet, the more tempting my desire to leap inside the Chrysler, speed to the airport, return to California a few days early, and never come back to this godforsaken part of the country again became.
Boone had been my source of strength for much of my life. He’d been just as much my weakness. I wasn’t sure what he was more of now, but I also wasn’t sure how much longer I could wait with my words hanging between us before I ran away and, this time, stayed away. For good.
A half a lifetime had passed, and Boone was still silent. I guessed he would stay that way, no matter how long I hovered on this dirt road.
My lungs had felt like withered balloons for years now, but I couldn’t feel them anymore. The part of me that was responsible for keeping the rest of me alive had disappeared. I’d been losing parts of me for a while. Scattered pieces of Clara Abbott were strewn all over this county. I only had one piece left, and I was leaving it on the side of this dusty Charleston road.
I managed to take a step and then another, the second harder than the first. By the time I was taking my third and closing in on the car, my legs felt as if the moon had been tied to one and the sun to the other. Moving seemed impossible, but somehow, I did it.
My arm was reaching out for the door handle, and just when my fingers were about to curl around the kiss of cool metal, something intercepted their path.
Warm fingers tied through mine, his firm palm pressing into mine. Boone’s footsteps crunched closer. Nothing but the sound of the car’s engine, the sounds of the night, and his slow and even breathing filled the air. But he had my hand. He’d reached for me. He hadn’t let me walk away. Instead of his grip loosening, it grew stronger.
“You were right.” His voice echoed into the night, his body so close to mine I felt the warmth of his words on the crest of my shoulder.
I tipped my head back. He was closer than I’d guessed. “Right about what?”
His other hand lifted to my face, his thumb tilting my chin up until I was looking at him. The veil that had been shading his eyes since I’d seen him in the bar was gone. The boy I fell in love with was in those eyes, in the man standing before me now.
His thumb swept up the line of my jaw, his forehead drawn together, before all at once, he seemed to relax. “About everything.”
My heartbeat thrummed in my ears, slow and steady and strong.
“I’m going to kiss you.” He spun me around slowly, his hand on my hand and the other one lowering into the bend of my neck, anchoring himself to me. “And I see you’ve got two options for how you can react to that.”
My eyebrows came together, my chest rising and falling heavily between us. “I do?”
Boone nodded, his eyes glimmering. He slid closer until our chests were just barely touching. I felt the car brushing against my back. “You can slap me across the face like I know you were desperate to do a few minutes ago, get in that car, and drive away. You can leave me in the rearview and the dust, and this is where I’ll stay if that’s what you want.”
I was about to ask what my other option was, because as much as I might have known leaving was what I should have done, it was the very last thing I wanted to do.
Boone pressed closer, cocking a brow and not letting my eyes leave his. “Or . . .”
But he’d said enough. The instinct that resided deep within me broke to the surface, and before I knew it had escaped, I was lifting onto my toes, my fingers curling around the material of his shirt and pulling him to me at the exact moment I was pushing myself closer.