Page 127 of Absolute Certainty
And then she snapped, tears torrenting onto her face.Sunshine.“That’s just it.Thatendearment. All of this.”
Her hands were shaking, like a ruptured fault line, making everything inside of her unsteady.
Jay’s eyes widened.
She swallowed hard. “Everything’s brilliant now. We’re on top of the world. Everyone loves summer in the beginning, but they get sick of it by the time August rolls around.” She sniffled, hating how her voice sounded. Howsmall,twisted, and tornshe felt, saying the words aloud.
Backing up, she leaned against her vanity for support. Jay didn’t move.
“They all left becauseof me,” she cried out. “They left because I’mexhausting. And it’s only a matter of time before this bubble breaks and you get there, too.”
He looked gobsmacked.
The light they’d ribboned themselves in turned to tendrils of smoke.
Taking a breath, Jay slowly inched closer. His warm gaze held her, and her heart snapped in two.
How could she mold herself into someone who was worthy of him? What part of her was she meant to change? She didn’t even know.
Gently, he tipped her chin up, and even more tenderly, he brushed the tears away from her cheek. “You know why I called you that?” he asked, his voice so soft, she wanted to cocoon herself into it.
Sahar shook her head.
His throat bobbed as he delicately ran his thumb over her cheek. “One day, back in February, you walked into Amanda’s right as I was about to turn around and quit.” He cleared his throat, like the memory was too painful. God, she felt like shit. Worse than shit.
“I was going to leave this damn city—get a different job elsewhere. I was livid, having the shittiest fucking morning, then you swung the door open with Willa.” He swept another tear from her face. “You two were mid-conversation, but you stopped talking, looked at me, and said, ‘hi’—specifically tome,with the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen.”
The glint in his eyes broke her even further.
“The fucking sun came out, Sahar. And I stayed because if I at least got to see you, then I hadsomethinghere to look forward to.”
He traced the curve of her jaw with his thumb. “I don’t know what was wrong with the men you dated, but there’s no way in hell I’m ever going to get tired of your light because I know how dark and grim it gets without you. I can call you something else if you’d like, but Ineverwant you to think that you could be exhausting to me.”
“I like it when you call me that,” she hiccupped, letting the tears fall again. “But it hurts. I don’t… I don’t know how to make it stop hurting. I always moved on so easily. I kept believing in love and happy endings. I kept leaping right into the arms of undeserving men, and you—you’re the one who deserves every part of me. The one who’s always deserved it, and I feel too broken to fully give myself to you because I’m terrified of fucking it up.”
Pulling her into his arms, Jay held her close.
She wrapped herself tightly around him, pleading internally for the strength totry—one more time.
Forhim.Becauseof him.
“You’re not broken,” he said, his voice low but full of conviction. She felt the words carefully pricking atop her skin, like they were trying to ink their way onto her body like one of her tattoos. “Tell me what I can do to take the pain away. I’ll do anything,” he added.
Sahar sniffled, letting more tears fall. “I just want to keep you,” she uttered, her voice barely above a whisper.
Cradling her head, he pressed a kiss so transcendent to her temple that she felt it reverberating through her soul. “You have me, Sahar. I’m yours. Only yours.”
She pulled away from him. She wanted to tell him what she hadn’t even told her sister, Willa, or any of their other friends.
The small, seemingly inconsequential thing that broke her and forced her to reevaluate her beliefs.
Boulders were lodged down her throat, making it impossible to speak. As though he could tell, Jay brought his palm to the side of her neck, sweeping his fingers with a coaxing pattern along her jaw.
Swallowing, she pushed every fear down, then, finally, she looked up at him. Sahar told him about what had happened on Martin’s birthday and how he’d shrugged her off. How it had made her feel. How she’d tried to justify it, and that she finally broke up with him the night of Priya and Sam’s show because he couldn’t even bother to meet with her in person to talk.
She told him how that’d been the night when she realized that the people around her were all irrevocably in love while she was walking on eggshells and no longer recognized herself.
Clingy.
