Page 166 of Wish You Were Mine
“Yeah…” She sighed, her fingers knotting together in front of her. “And well, I guess the good news is that my dad said I could stay in your class. And that he wouldn’t go to Dean Harris…or try to get you fired.”
“That’s good,” I said, a small hit of relief blooming in my chest.
Could we just stop this conversation there? Pretend there wasn’t anything else? No real reason for her to look as sad as she did?
But then she looked up at me, her beautiful blue eyes breaking my heart as she said, “There’s just one little thing he asks in return.”
“There is?” I gulped.
She nodded. “He says he won’t do anything to interrupt your career as long as I…promise to end things. With you.”
And there it was.
The words I’d seen coming the second I opened the door. The ones I’d hoped I was wrong about.
“Oh.”
It was all I could manage.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her eyes welling fast. And seeing the same heartbreak I was feeling reflected in this fierce, vulnerable girl I’d fallen for wrecked me.
“I didn’t want it to be like this,” she said. “But I…I couldn’t let him take your career from you. You’ve worked too hard, Owen. Youbelonghere. Your students?—”
“You matter, too,” I cut in, the words rasping out harder than I meant. “This wasn’t just…” I broke off, trying to swallow the lump forming in my throat. “I thought this was something real. Something rare. The thing I’d been hoping to find and never could.”
“It was.” Her voice cracked. “It is. But we have to think about your future. And if that means stepping back…then I’ll do it.”
Her words hit me like a blade to the chest.
A sharp, twisting pain that stole the air from my lungs.
Like my heart was being ripped apart from the inside—slow and merciless.
I couldn’t breathe through it.
Couldn’t look at her without wanting to fall to my knees and beg her not to go.
But I didn’t. I just stood there.
Because how could I ask her to stay when she was already tearing herself apart to protect me?
She glanced up, and our eyes locked. And in that look was everything.
Everything we didn’t have the words for.
Everything we were about to lose.
And suddenly, I couldn’t hold back anymore.
I reached for her, pulling her into my arms like I could memorize the feel of her before she slipped away.
And then she was holding me, too. Desperate. Clinging.
Her face buried in my chest. My hands cradling the back of her head.
“I don’t want to lose you,” I whispered into her hair, the words muffled and broken.
“I don’t want to go,” she breathed back, her fingers fisting the fabric of my shirt.
