Page 26 of Edge of Forever

“So you think I need to experience ugliness to qualify to be your girlfriend? My parents abandoning me and my little brothers wasn’t ugly? Finding out my parents were willing to sign away their parental rights wasn’t ugly? The fact that they left, and even after being confronted by Ford and Sydney, have no interest in their children isn’t ugly? Finding out that they chased away my pregnant sister’s baby daddy so they could steal her baby for themselves wasn’t ugly?”

This isn’t going the way I wanted this conversation to.

Or maybe it is.

I’m trying to be unselfish.

But she’s not letting me.

“So what you’re trying to say is you want to do the long distance thing?” I ask after a moment.

“I want to do the here and now thing,” she snaps. “You’re going to be here for the next month or so. I’m going to be here for the next month or so. I have to go to school, you have to go to work—but hey, that’s how dating works. Isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is.”

“So why can’t we date? Why can’t we officially become boyfriend and girlfriend and see what happens?”

Because I’m going to fall head over heels and potentially drag her down to some chapel.

I don’t say that, but how can she not see how I feel?

You have to tell her, asshole.

“We’re going to catch feelings,” I say slowly. “And then go our separate ways.”

“You think I haven’t already caught feelings?” she asks. “And I may not be an expert on men, but I dare you to tell me you haven’t.”

Christ.

Maybe I am underestimating her.

She’s not a kid.

She’s not like the high school girls I dated when I was that age.

Kirsten is special.

She always has been.

And no matter how hard I’ve tried to resist, she’s mine now.

“Sam?”

I guess she’s waiting for an answer.

Have I caught feelings?

Fuck yes, I have.

“You know I have feelings for you,” I say. “That’s why I’m trying to do what’s better for you than for myself. The thought of you fucking some frat boy makes me want to hurt him. But in that scenario above, where you meet someone interesting… how is it fair that you can’t kiss someone? Touch someone? I don’t want you to miss out on the exploration that’s part of life… Part of growing up.”

She sighs. “But what’s the protocol if that never happens? Are we going to not be together on the off chance I meet someone I like enough to want to kiss? Because let’s be honest, you’re going to meet girls too. There will most likely be a lot more groupies around you than frat boys around me.”

“Do you worry about Ford cheating on Sydney?”

“No, but they have a family, and years of history.”

“Yet they’ve been in love since they were seventeen. They would have been together back then if your parents hadn’t lied and forcibly separated them. Right?”

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