Page 69 of Crossroads
“You need to do this. You need to go to college here in California, far away from your parents and their rules. You need to figure yourself out.”
“I know what I want,” I say firmly, looking into his eyes, despite the stupid tears that have started to fall down my cheeks. “I want you.”
“You have me,” he says firmly. “You have me, Emerson. You’re going to go to college, and I’m going back to Kensley. But you will always have me.”
I shake my head. “No. You’ll go back there, and you’ll fall right back into your routine. You’ll..” I nearly gasp, trying to catch my breath because it hurts too much. “You’ll marry Lucy, and she’ll pop out a couple of kids. And that will be that.”
“I don’t want to marry Lucy anymore.” But he seems resigned, like maybe I’m not so wrong, and it kills me.
“But you will.”
He sighs softly and then grips my face in both his hands, using his thumbs to wipe at the tears, fruitlessly because they keep coming. “No. I won’t. I want you too, Emerson.” He kisses my cheeks over the salty tears. “We’re just different. From two different worlds.”
“You’d never be happy here,” I say the inevitable.
“And you’d never be happy there,” he says softly.
“But I lov—” He stops me, pressing a hard kiss against my lips, halting the words I was trying to say because I feel them. Because he needs to hear them but clearly doesn’t want to.
“Don’t say it.”
“But I do,” I say, standing up tall, my shoulders back and my chin lifted. “I do.”
“I do too,” he says, making my shoulders start to slump slightly because if he does, then why can’t we say it?
Why does it have to be so hard?
I can just go with him.
But I know I can’t. He’s right.
I just need to let him go and then go back to campus and go back to being me again. To who I was.
A miserable, reckless shithead who didn’t care about anyone else.
He grips the back of my neck and pulls me to him, pressing a kiss against my forehead and forcing my eyes closed. The pain blooming in my chest is worse than anything I’ve ever felt. “Go and enjoy your time here, Emerson. You have my number. Call me.”
“And make breathy sounds into the phone?” I joke, and it makes us both smile, his lips still on my forehead and his hand still gripping my neck. Not letting me go.
“Of course.”
“I don’t know how to do this.” He pulls away from my forehead but still holds onto the back of my neck. “How do I just let you go? And who the hell am I? I’ve never needed anyone else in my life.”
“Me neither,” he says, looking almost as surprised as I do. “You figure it out, and you let me know.”
I nod and then press my lips against his lips softly. “I do, you know? I need you to know.” I love you.
He nods, swallowing hard. “I do too.” He says it firmly, like it’s a fact that can never be disputed.
And for now, it has to be enough.
THIRTY
“Not like that,” I direct the new farmhand, who’s already annoying the ever-living shit out of me.
And yes, I know it’s not his fault. He’s actually pretty good at his job and is a good five years older than me. He’s been working on different farms around here for quite a while, but he’s not...
Emerson.
