Page 145 of Tell Me It’s Right

My head snaps to look at him, the relief enough to choke on.

Neither of us says anything for what feels like a long time. We just take each other in. He’s lost a bit of his tan, and hemust have cut his hair recently. The dark waves barely brush his ears now. I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. If I look different to him now. If he’s spent more nights than not with me in his dreams the way I have, wondering if my brain has started to lose all the little details of him.

“Are you happy?” he asks. “In the city?”

There’s more weight to his question than the simple words imply. This is the chasm between us.

Because I want him back. That’s never changed. But I can’t help but wonder, would it feel any less like limbo than it did before? Long distance with no end in sight? A relationship broken into bits and pieces—a few hours here, a weekend there—never quite fitting into each other’s lives completely? Because it’s about more than just the physical distance between us now. It’s the directions our lives are heading. The lifestyles we want to lead. If those will ever align again.

I meet his eyes, and I’m frozen, unable to lie to him. My voice comes out small. “I am. Are you happy?”

He gives me a small smile. “I’m getting there. Is this still…” He gestures between us. “Is this still something you want to talk about?”

There are so many things I’m desperate to say to him right now. How much I’ve missed him. How good it is to see him. How sometimes, on the harder days, I curl up in one of his T-shirts even though it stopped smelling like him months ago.

But even now that we’ve hit our deadline, I don’t know what to say because so much has changed, but so much hasn’t. I don’t feel ready to come home yet. The homesickness is still there a lot of the time, but the city has grown on me too, just like everyone said it would. There are so many parts I would miss if I left.

And my mom was right about a lot of things. I don’t think I would’ve been able to come as far as I have in such a short period of time without being a little selfish. All of my time, all ofmy focus, has been on me. And now that I know what that feels like…well, I don’t know if I’m ready to give that up. If it would even be possible for me to have both.

If this new version of me is someone Liam would want anymore.

Because there’s something else my mom said that’s been playing on repeat in my mind for months.

He is never going to leave this town.

He might wait around for you to come back, but he won’t move forward into this new phase of your life with you.

But none of that logic does anything to extinguish the bone-deep acheinside of me that I’ve never felt for anything other than him.

Laughter inside draws our attention to the window.

“Liam!” calls Casey. “Liiiiam!”

I wave a hand in front of my face. “It’s okay. It can wait.”

A troubled line deepens in his forehead as he searches my face, but he nods and takes a step back.

He’s nearly to the house by the time I find my voice. “Liam?—”

“Gracie—” he says at the same time, pausing a pace from the door. His jaw works like he’s arguing with himself over his next words. He settles on: “You look beautiful.”

My fingers tighten around his jacket, not ready to let it go yet. I stare at him, silently, desperately, because there is nothing I can say right now that would be fair. Nothing that will ease this gaping hole in my chest that’s my own doing.

It’s stupid, what I’m feeling. Selfish. Unreasonable. This is what I wanted. This is what I chose. And I don’t feel any closer to having an answer for him than I did months ago.

But seeing him in person, if I made any progress over the last few months, it’s long gone now.

His footsteps crunch through the snow, harder and faster this time.

I barely have a chance to pull in a breath before he has my face between his hands, and then he kisses me.

My hands fist in his shirt. I stumble back a step, and he follows, his body caging me in against the railing and his hips pressing into mine. I all but moan as his tongue sweeps into my mouth.

I can’t stop. I kiss him back just as desperately, both of us barely coming up for air. I’ve imagined touching him, feeling him, tasting him a thousand times since we last spoke, but it’s nothing in comparison to the real thing.

I trail my hands everywhere I can reach—his face, his hair, his neck, his chest, his arms, like I need to feel every part of him before I can convince myself this is real. That it’s not just another dream.

I don’t know how I end up in his truck, if he initiates or I do. It’s parked far enough back on the property that it’s shrouded in shadow from the surrounding trees and I can barely hear the music from the house once we’re inside.

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