Page 121 of Fair Catch

The sentiment feels ridiculous considering where we were only a few weeks ago. Laughing and sight-seeing and stacking more building blocks of a relationship unlike any other I’ve had.

And now we’re here. To this.

To goodbye.

Brushing my fingertips over his tear-stained cheek, I find myself filled with regret. For the time we wasted, and more importantly, for the time we’re about to lose.

“The day you moved in, I started counting down to graduation,” I tell him, the words barely audible. “I spent every morning checking off the remaining days I had to deal with you in my presence, my space, my life. But now…I want all those days back.”

I want all the ones still to come.

“I know,” he whispers, it coming out raw and grated. “I know.”

My forehead comes to rest against his again, and I force myself to keep it together. To rein in the hurt and the anger and the pain, even if it’s just for right now. Because it’s possible this is the only time we have left.

“How do we say goodbye?” I ask, my voice crumbling beneath the weight of the question. Of the emotion it drags to the surface.

“I wish I knew.”

I wish we didn’t have to.

I lean in at the thought and press my lips to his mouth, his jaw, his face; peppering them over his skin, kissing away all the tears before taking his mouth again. Then I kiss him like it’s the last thing I’ll ever do—because it very well might be.

Because the ache in my chest is so severe, it feels like I might die on the spot.

Like I might cease to exist.

Kason is the first to pull away, his jaw straining with effort as three words that shatter my heart leave his lips.

“I should go.”

My body immediately rejects the idea, panic hitting me square in the chest. The thought of him walking out this door and not coming back…I just can’t. Not now, not ever.

“Kason.”

He shakes his head, the tears flowing freely at this point from both of us, as he shifts to the edge of the mattress. I watch, helpless, as he grabs his boxers from the floor, and before I can stop myself, my hand is on his wrist to stop him.

“Stay,” I whisper, not caring if I have to beg, plead, or lose all form of self-respect. I can’t let him leave. Not yet. “Please, baby. For just one more night.”

If I thought he looked decimated before, it’s got nothing on his expression when he hears my plea. The way my voice shatters right along with my heart.

And though we know it’ll do neither of us any good, he concedes anyway. Drops his boxers back to the ground and crawls right back in beside me, chest to chest.

“Okay,” he murmurs, his forehead pressing against mine. “One more night.”

We curl into each other, our limbs tangled in a mess of cum, sweat, and sheets, but we don’t dare move to clean up or redress. The second we do, the bubble bursts and reality will set back in.

A reality neither of us are ready to face.

His breathing evens out before mine, the hand that was tracing lines over my shoulder falling to the side.

I’m grateful he’s the one to succumb first, because it gives me a chance to memorize every inch of him. Each strand of hair laying out of place, all the freckles dotting his nose, the way his eyelashes brush over his cheekbones when he sleeps, every rise and fall of his chest as he slumbers.

I take all these little pieces of him for myself, gathering them one by one in my mind. There’s no doubt I’ll have to box them up eventually, put them under lock and key in order to move on from the one thing I want to keep forever.

So I collect as many of them as I can, fighting a losing battle with sleep until unconsciousness eventually pulls me under. And when I wake in the morning, I don’t have it in me to look to the other side of my bed.

Because I know it’s empty.

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