Page 71 of Take What You Want

He watches me warily.

“You know what I think the most twisted part of this is?” I say with a weak laugh. “I think that you truly did love me. You did. And yet you still hurt me like that. You rejected me. You pushed me away. You made me question if everything we had was an illusion. If I made things up in my head.” I blink back tears, refusing to let them fall in front of him again. “The way you looked at me. The way you laughed with me. The way you held me and stroked my hair. You made me question everything about us.” My voice wavers, and I hate myself for not being able to hold it together at this moment. “And what I realized is that I wasn’t crazy. I didn’t make any of it up. It was all real.”

“It was,” he croaks.

“You were just too much of a coward to tell me you loved me back.”

My head and my heart war inside, torn in two completely different directions. My head is telling me not to trust him. To remember what he did, what he said or more so refused to say. To keep my feelings in check and keep the walls up that I’ve built with him.

Because while my heart may be wanting to forget how badly he ripped it to shreds, my mind refuses. I trusted him with it once, and I’ll be damned if I make the same mistake again.

9 YEARS AGO

JANE

The grass is cool beneath our backs, but neither of us complain because it just gives us an excuse to hold each other tighter. The sky is clear tonight, giving an uninterrupted view of the stars.

“It’s hard to believe June is already almost over,” I say, tucking my head into Nikolai’s neck as he pulls me closer. His arm is draped around my back, palm warm against my waist.

He sighs, but there’s a tremor of excitement beneath it. “It went by so fast.”

“What am I going to do without you? Without all of you?”

The guys are leaving for Los Angeles in just a few days, while I’m still stuck here for the rest of the summer until I move into my dorm in August.

His fingers squeeze my waist, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s been doing that a lot lately. Relying on touching me to soothe me instead of using his words.

“I’m going to miss you,” I say, breathing him in as if I can commit it to memory and it’ll sustain us through the thousands of miles that will soon stretch between.

He tilts his head and brushes a gentle kiss to the top of my forehead. “I’m going to miss you too, LJ.”

A burning inferno bubbles in my chest and up to my throat, demanding air and to be expelled. I try pushing it down like I have been for the last couple of months, but it’s suffocating.

I’ve been waiting for him to say it first, but our time is running out. I can’t let us move to different sides of the country, with no idea when we’ll see each other next, without saying it. He needs to know. Maybe it’ll change things. Maybe he’ll want to stay here through the end of the summer so we can have a little more time together.

“Nikolai,” I say, voice shaking. I pull out of his embrace to plant my elbow beneath me and roll to my side so I can look at him.

His blond hair shines under the moonlight and his crystal eyes sparkle as he turns his attention from the sky to me.

I take a deep breath, and say it. “I love you.”

Even the crickets and wind blowing the trees of Nikolai’s backyard seem to fall still as the words sit between us.

His body, once lax and languid against the grass, goes stiff and rigid. A muscle in his jaw tics and the hand that once was wrapped around my waist balls into a fist.

I know he heard me, but as he continues to sit silently, I start to second guess it.

Finally, he whispers, “Don’t say that,” so quietly I wonder if I imagined it.

“What?” I ask, sitting up and he does the same. My stomach sinks as I take in the lines marring his forehead.

“Don’t say that, Jane,” he repeats, shaking his head. “Please.” He sounds desperate, as if he begs and shakes his head hard enough, it’ll erase the words I just put between us.

Why does he want me to take them back? Hasn’t he been feeling the same thing I have these past six months?

“No,” I say, frowning at him. “I do, Nikolai?—”

“Jane, don’t. Don’t love me. We’re too young.” He runs his hands through his hair and tugs at the roots. “I-I can’t. I can’t…”

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