Page 93 of Catch the Sun

“‘Atoms to Atoms’ by Eyes on the Shore,” he tells me, setting the phone atop the bridge rail. “Do you want to dance?”

“Yes.”

The answer falls out so easily.

I plan to leave Tennessee behind for good next summer and begin my horse-farm dream. I’ll save up for a cut-rate car, or maybe Chevy will hook me up with something cheap yet reliable. Hell, I’ll hitchhike if I have to.

But if Max asked me to stay…

I can’t help but wonder if that same answer would fall out just as easily.

Hey, Sunny.

Stay.

That’s what he said when he pulled me from the lake, and those words still skate across my mind. But I’m in his arms before I can think about them too long. He pulls me close, snuffing out the chill in my bones. He wraps two strong arms around me and props his chin to the top of my head. My face is smashed against the front of his chest as we begin to sway to the music, and visions of a snow-dusted Michigan backdrop melt into images of a future just like this. Dancing on bridges until the end of time. I wonder if he sees that. I wonder if he wants that.

I wonder if I want that.

I lift my head to gaze up at him, my hands dipping lower and clinging to his hips. “If money, time, and distance were off the table and you could do anything…what would you be doing right now?” I ask. I want to know his dreams. Would he be here with me? Would he be somewhere far away from here, chasing a different life? Would he be scaling a mountain, diving deepbeneath the wave-spun sea, or writing stories in a secluded cabin in the woods?

Maybe he wants to see the world. Maybe he wants to change the world.

“Anything?” he whispers back.

“Yes. Anything at all.”

“I’d be kissing you, Ella.”

My heart slams to a full stop inside my chest. It’s like a stoplight switched from green to red and forgot about the yellow. I inch backward, hardly able to catch my breath. “What?”

“I’d be kissing you.”

“I heard you.”

He smiles and ducks his head, lifting only his eyes to my face as his arms drop to his sides. “Want me to clarify better?”

I take another step back, then another. Terror grips me, even though I knew this was coming. That’s how these things start. That’s how it started with Jonah and Erin.

Friendship.

Hand-holding.

A kiss.

Love.

Everyone dies bloody.

The end.

Panic and terror fuse as one as I swing my head back and forth and swallow hard. “I–I already told you… I’m not looking for romance. I don’t want that.”

“But you want to lose your virginity to me.”

I swallow again. Harder. I try to swallow down that confession in my bedroom yesterday and rip it from his mind. From the universe. It was a stupid thing to say, honest or not, and now Max will never let me live it down. “I didn’t mean it like that. It wouldn’t be about intimacy or, God forbid,love. It would just be about—”

“Getting laid?” He frowns. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

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