Page 40 of Could Have Been Us
“Hey, Deals.”
I move forward, pulling Jess into my arms. “Are you all right?”
She wipes her face and shakes her head. “I just need to go to the beach. Please. Can I have the keys?”
I look to Delia, who shrugs. Whatever happened at dinner tonight must’ve been bad and my brother was being a dick.
“Maybe you should stay the night here,” I offer.
She shakes her head. “No, I need to leave and think. I can’t . . .”
“Is it my parents?”
“It’s everything.”
I know more than most about how sometimes you just have to escape. There have been so many times I’ve retreated to the beach house, where the air is filled with the brine of the ocean and it doesn’t remind me of here.
I walk over to the drawer and pull out the keys to the beach house.
“Here.”
She inhales deeply. “Thank you. I just need some time, and . . .”
“You don’t have to explain. I understand needing to just go.”
“Thank you,” she says again, pulling me in for a hug.
Jess and Delia leave, and when I turn back, Jack is standing at the door. He closes his eyes for a second and then exhales. “I can’t be involved with whatever you’re doing in Georgia.”
“I see.”
“I know that you think I’m wrong, but when we gave Kinsley up, we gave her up. Meddling in her life now would be unfair to all of us.”
“Okay.”
I don’t see, but even though this is what I expected from him, a small part of me hoped for something different.
Jack continues to explain. “If Samuel needs us, he would tell us.”
“Right.”
“I won’t do this to you again, Stella.”
“Do what?”
He comes closer, and his fingers tip my chin up. “Hurt you.”
Little does he know that I’m hurting every minute that I’m near him. That my heart cries out for him regardless of where we are or who we’re near. He hurts me because we will never be despite us both wanting to be each other’s everything.
“Too late.” I say the only two words I can.
“Don’t say that.”
“What? Say the truth? We’ve been dancing around it for a long time, why not just be honest for once?”
“And what’s the truth?”
I step back three times, forcing distance between us because him touching me is too much. The contrast between how it makes me feel and how deeply his words wound me is breathtakingly painful. “That it hurts me that we will never be more than this—two people who want each other but one is too afraid to reach out.”
