Colton clears his throat, straightens up in his seat. “Back there on the water, that was . . .”
My eyes drift back to him, every bit of me wanting to hear the rest of that sentence. Wanting to know what he thought it was. But he just looks down and drums his fingers on the steering wheel, watching them for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought you felt . . .” He shakes his head, puts the bus in drive. “Never mind. I’ll take you back to your car.”
He turns the wheel, and we roll forward slowly, onto the road to his house, and to him not knowing the truth—not about Trent, or his heart, or what I felt out there too.
“Stop,” I say softly. Colton presses the brake down and looks over at me, and I see hope without caution. “I did,” I say. “Feel that way.”
Relief floods his face, and I try to be as brave and honest as he was just a moment ago.
“Out on the water was . . .” I pause, gathering my courage. “Was the first time I’ve felt like that in a long time. Since . . .” It’s so close, the truth, rising to the surface again. “Since I lost someone really close to me,” I say, finding my voice. “Someone I loved.” There’s a small measure of relief in the tiny bit of truth, but it’s short-lived.
“I know,” Colton says, looking down at the steering wheel.
Everything in me—breath, pulse, thought—stops.
“You know?”
His eyes run over me, and I don’t see any of the things I’m waiting for—hurt, anger—none of it. The only thing I can feel from him in this moment is sympathy. “I thought,” he says quietly. “You hold back—the way people sometimes do when they’ve lost someone.” He pauses. “Or when they think they’re going to. I had a girlfriend a couple of years ago who got like that when things—” He clears his throat. “She held back with me that way. The way you do.”
My heart leaps back into action, alternately pounding out guilt and worry and relief against my ribs. He doesn’t know he’s talking about Trent, but he can see more than I realize.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I should’ve told you sooner, but I’ve been . . .”
Holding back for more reasons than just feeling guilty about Trent. Holding back because I’m afraid of what will happen if you know the truth. What I’ll lose.
A lump rises in the back of my throat, and tears well up, ready to overflow with what I know I need to say next.
“Don’t be sorry,” Colton says, leaning closer. He brings his lips, so softly, to my forehead in a kiss that asks nothing in return. I close my eyes and let the feeling of it sink in, and wish it were that simple.
His lips move to my temple, trail down my cheek, and linger there, a breath away from mine. “You told me that,” he whispers, “not to be sorry for the things you have no control over.”
Our lips brush, and I feel like there isn’t anything I want to hold back. I almost sink into him, into another kiss, but he pulls away, just enough so we’re eye to eye in the darkness between us.
“Please,” he whispers, “don’t be sorry for anything. Especially this.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I DRIVE HOME in silence. Dark, heavy silence, broken only by an occasional set of passing headlights. I see flashes of tonight: the sunset, the glow of the water, the fireworks, that kiss. And flashes of another night and another kiss.
The first time Trent kissed me, we were night swimming in my pool. Late, after everyone else was asleep. I’d swum past him under the water, feeling my hair ripple behind me in the light and hoping my silhouette looked as pretty as I felt right then. When I came up, he was there in front of me. His hands just barely grazed my waist, and we balanced there on that moment, wondering and knowing at the same time what was about to happen. Our first kiss was soft, sweet. A question on my lips. He tasted like the watermelon bubble gum he was always chewing, and the stolen summer night. The memory produces a tiny ache around my heart, a kind of longing that feels distant and nostalgic.
The feel of his lips on mine is just a whisper of a memory. But the memory of Colton’s is vivid and alive. Where Trent’s first kiss was shy, timid, a question, kissing Colton was like already knowing the answer. Knowing that answer was each other.
But there is so much tangled up in us, and all around us. Loss and guilt. Secrets and lies. So many things he doesn’t know, things that I am sorry for because I do have control over them. Or I thought I did until tonight. I thought I did until I recognized that long-forgotten falling sensation I didn’t know I would feel again. Didn’t know I could feel again.
When I pull into the driveway, the house is dark, and I sit for a moment and look out the window at the sky so full of stars it looks like it can’t really exist. Like something so beautiful and so fragile couldn’t really be true. And then the light in Ryan’s room switches on, and all I want is for her to tell me it can.
She jumps a little when I burst through her bedroom door without knocking. “Hey, how was your—” Her smile falls at the sight of me. “What’s wrong?”
That’s all it takes. I make it the few steps to the bed where she’s sitting before I crumple into her, and everything I’ve been holding back unravels.
“Hey, hey, hey,” she says, putting her arms around me. “What’s going on, what happened?”
I close my eyes tight and curl into myself as my shoulders shake in her arms.
“Quinn,” she says, pulling me away from her enough to look at me. “What happened?”
I see it again, our kiss. “I . . . he . . .” Then I hear his words, Please don’t be sorry for anything. Especially this, and I bite my bottom lip, run my hands over my face that’s hot and wet with tears.