Page 23 of Chasing Love: The Owens
I need to say no. But my fingers twitch on the steering wheel, and some desperate, tired part of me wants to sit across from him for a few minutes and pretend we’re still the people who were each other’s everything once upon a time.
I miss his friendship.
If things were different, if Leia wasn’t his, maybe I could have coffee with him and tell him all my problems. But that’s not our reality.
“I can’t,” I murmur.
“Won’t,” he says gently.
All the words I’ve wanted to tell him since I saw him at Lottie’s wedding rise up my throat, pressing against my tongue to come out.
I miss you. I’ll always love you. Our daughter has your eyes, and I don’t know how to tell you without putting her in harm’s way.
Instead, I say, “I need to get the truck back to my dad.”
He nods and steps back from the door.
My finger goes to press the window button, but he breaks the distance again, putting his hands on the roof of the truck, leaning in. “If you need or want to talk… I know… I mean, our past and all that, but just… I’m here.”
I nod and swallow all the chaos of my emotions. “Thanks, Bennett.”
I give him a tight smile, and his eyes lock with mine for a beat before he pushes himself off the truck again. I quickly put it in gear to get the hell away from him before I break.
I give myself one glance in the rearview mirror before I turn the corner, pushing it all away.
Chapter Eleven
Sean,
* * *
Leia asked me today if it’s better to be the one left or the one doing the leaving.
You’ve read how Bennett and I started dating, but that question made me think about how we ended. How someone can be the center of your universe, and then one day, poof, they’re gone.
It’s scary, looking back and realizing that. You wonder if you had held on tighter, had put more effort in, instead of letting it all slowly drift away, could things have been different?
My dad was transferred to Iowa the summer between my junior and senior year. Iowa is far from Nebraska, but to two teenagers, it might as well have been the other side of the world. There’s no way two teenagers in love could realistically see each other or make a long-distance relationship work.
But we naïvely thought we could.
The day I left, I stood in my driveway, all my friends huddled on the sidewalk as the movers packed up our house, and all I could do was cry and cling to Bennett.
When my parents told me we had to go, Bennett pulled me into his arms, flush against his body.
“I love you,” he whispered in my ear.
My fingers tightened around his shirt. I wanted to kick and scream and tell my parents I was staying. Yell that they were ripping me away from everything I loved. Forcing me to start over in a new town with kids I didn’t know.
“I love you.” My voice cracked, and his cheek brushed along my temple.
“You’re going to love it there. You’ll see.”
We hadn’t talked about how we’d stay together, just that we would. It was just assumed. We made promises to write. He said maybe he could get his parents to let him and Emmett drive up before school started again. At the time, I believed all of our fictions.
It was only supposed to be one year apart. I’d try to go to college near him, and we’d reconnect as though the year apart had never happened.
“I’ll write you as soon as we get there. A letter for every day we’re apart.”
