Page 56 of Born in the Spring

“Are you—” The rest of that question gets cut off with disbelief in my gusted breath, my lungs still working too hard as I press at her harder. “Because youknowwhat this will doto me and you don’t want to face that.” I close the remaining distance between us and her parting lips pause around caught words. “You don’t want to face how you feel about me,” I add lower, taking her face in my hands, trapping her next breath in her lungs. “But youcan. We can figure this out together.”

Her body heat feels hotter to the blaze of my insides as my cold surface sends a shiver through her—but I know now that’s more from my touch alone.

She stays steeled except for where I’m holding her, my grip as steady as the one in our gazes, locked and imploring. Her lips are still parted in a pause, her released exhale so shallow. But her pulse is pounding as wild as mine against my palms.

My thumb glides up to rub at the black splotch of makeup under her eye, now seeing the pinkened skin rimming her lids. “You’ve been crying,” I murmur out loud to the confirmation of her struggle over how she really feels,to even make it out here this far, to force thisdate.

I couldn’t stop her.

“Elara. . .”

Her eyes explore me too, in rapid blinks, mostly my bare arms, before giving an assessment that’s the furthest thing from my mind right now. “You should go inside. Jasper. You’re freezing.” Her voice is fragmented with her pushing but I’m not letting go.

“I’m not going to go inside. I’m going tobegyou to stay with me.” Her jaw shakes with her swallow. “Don’t go, Elara. Please don’t do this to us.” I beg through the rising knot in my throat, and tears flood her darkened eyes as she strains to keep them in. Always needing to be the stronger one—the more stubborn one. Like she’s doing what’s best by pushing her feelings away. Like she can’t have this. Likewecan’t have this.

I’m so far past lettinganyonethink that, but past experience still creeps up as a sting in my own eyes, a more desperate hold on her that she’s leaned into more.

“You areimpossiblenot to fall in love with unless the guy is an absolute fucking idiot,” I say through a watery laugh before I’m a ramble of revived emotions. “So I know Tripp’s already there, and you’re gonna go on this date, and you’re gonna fall for him back, and I can’t—”

“It’s just dinner,” she argues again, the lower, more assuring way only slightly more convincing.

“Then why go at all?”

Her fingers wrap around both of my wrists, a gentle touch that feels more like an apology before she’ll ask me to let her go. “I have to move forward with my life.” The words are weak, another denial to herself and to me, recited lines.

I release her myself when she gives two light tugs on my wrists, but I’m not moving. “Then why come back to me?” I ask now, with the strength we both need.

“I came back to all of you—”

“You came back to me,” I cut into her next attempt at denial. “Don’t go,” I beg again. “We’ll figure this out, just…don’t go.” I breathe the repeat, my eyes closing on a slow blink as I rest my forehead against hers, feeling her small gasp against my lips as I return my aching hands to any part of her, now her waist.

I need you too.

“Wearein this together,” I tell her as her words from that day come like a current through my head, as I finally hear her own desperation inside them. “There is awe.” I take back that moment, all the shit I didn’t mean, that wasn’tmetalking. “You and me. And we’re right, Elara,” I say with a squeeze inmy grip, as her gaze is locked on my mouth through every word, so close to hers. “We areright.”

When her hands come up in the same grip around my arms, I whisper her same assuring, “It’s okay.”

Her head tips up in a motion that brings her mouth even closer to mine. And for the second I think this is it, that I’m finally going to kiss her, my lungs ready to breathe her in, my hands hold tighter as I pull her in more—

And that’s when she continues her motion, away from me. And for the first time since I started running after her, the cold slips into the space she adds as she moves back.

She shakes her head, but with how she’s avoiding my eyes, it’s more to what’s inside her head than to me. And when she mutters out, “Mine never had the chance to be,” my own thoughts first hook to the soft possession in her voice aroundmine. Hers. Her love for me.

Then I process the grief in her tone through the rest of them. I know what regret sounds like, and I give a silent thanks that that’s not what I hear. Just something final. Something she’ll never get to change. A chance she would still take if she could.

Nerves seize my body with a conclusion I can’t even acknowledge to myself—not yet, not until she confirms it first.

Her phone chimes, jolting both of us, and she doesn’t miss a second before she digs it out of her purse, but I don’t let the haste in her movements sink me. Because now I know it’s just the fear. She’s scared of her own feelings.For me.

“I have to…go, and. . .” She lets her escape hang through more open space between us as she backs up to continue on the path, toTripp. But I feel a hope in that lingering, one I finally let wash over my entire body, one that lets me let her leave—I don’t have a choice but to let her—and one that also tells meshe won’t leavewithhim.

“You’ve never seen me in pursuit of you before,” I call to her back, my lips allowing a smile through my determination, through my returning confidence, for this night, and at her next slowing, then stopping steps. “But you are now.”

I’m always going to be here, and I won’t stop pursuing her until she’s officially mine.

Our hearts beat in sync, and at the end of all this, it’ll be us.

Her boots are a softer clack on the path, and I watch her until she’s out of sight, but she’s not leaving with Tripp.

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