Page 78 of What Comes After

Now he was here, proving how wrong I’d been and sharing his feelings. I couldn’t bear to see him so distressed.

“Theo, I’m not going anywhere, and I’m always going to be in your life,” I assured him. “I’ll admit that our conversation a few days ago wasn’t exactly the most pleasant, but you need to understand that me leaving your place to come back to my apartment wasn’t about me not wanting to be in your life. It was just about me needing to get back to mine.”

Shaking his head again, he declared, “No. I know why you left, and I understand it, but when I say that I want you in my life, I don’t mean I want it to be like it’s been for far too many years. I want you in my life the way it should have always been.”

My body went solid. I didn’t want to make assumptions about any of this, but things were taking a turn I wasn’t sure I was prepared for, certainly not the one I had been expecting.

“What are you saying?”

He stepped forward, closing the distance between us. Then he reached for my hand, held it in his and squeezed it before he shared, “I left here twelve years ago, and I was so stupid. It’d be easy to stand here and blame being young, but I should have known better. For some foolish reason, I always thought everything would work out the way it was supposed to, the way I wanted it to. I mean, everything I had wanted to happen in my life was happening. It was all so easy, and I thought it was going to be that way with you.”

He stopped for a moment, took a few breaths, and continued, “I was wrong. I was so wrong. And I can’t even begin to tell you how much it gutted me when I came back and learned that you had moved on, that you had a boyfriend.”

For the first time since he’d started indicating things I hadn’t been anticipating, I moved, and it was only because my body jerked backward. “What?”

Without taking his eyes off of mine, Theo’s head moved slowly from one side to the other. “I’ll never forget when my mom told me she’d gone out for lunch with you the week prior, and you had told her about the guy you’d started dating. She had indicated it was serious between you and that guy, and even though I think I did a good job hiding it, I was devastated. I knew I’d lost you.”

Lost me?

How could he say that?

“Why would me getting a boyfriend upset you?” I asked him, feeling my heart pounding wildly in my chest. “Theo, you’ve got to be joking me right now. You had all of those celebrity women you’d be on press tours or walking the red carpet with. Gorgeous movie stars with whom I could never dream of competing.”

“Of course, you couldn’t,” he returned, striking a blow I don’t think he realized he’d delivered. When I dropped my gaze to the ground between us, I felt his opposite hand gently touch my chin. He pinched it softly between his thumb and forefinger and urged me to look at him again. I did, but it wasn’t without tears in my eyes. “You couldn’t compete with them, because there was no competition. They were never going to be what you were to me. And for the record, I never moved on to anyone until long after I realized I’d lost my shot with you.”

My lips parted, a tear escaping and spilling down the side of my cheek. Theo released my chin, shifted his hand to the side, and swept the tear away.

Then his voice dipped low as his opposite hand gave mine another squeeze. “My dad told me a long time ago that time is our most precious resource we can’t get back. It kills me to know how much time I’ve lost, but I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere. I want to fix this. I want to fix what comes after all the mistakes I’ve made. Before I left here twelve years ago, I kissed you and told you I loved you, Devyn. Maybe I wasn’t as clear about it as I should have been. I was in love with you then. I fell in love with you all over again these last few weeks, and I haven’t been able to get the taste of you off my tongue in twelve years. I don’t know where you—”

That was all he managed to get out, because I couldn’t take it any longer. I yanked my hand out of his, threw my arms over his shoulders, and captured his mouth with mine.

NINETEEN

Devyn

I was no longer in control.

Too many words had been said that I couldn’t ignore, and the moment my lips touched Theo’s again, I was gone.

Lost to years of longing and desire.

I was in love with you then.

He loved me then.

I fell in love with you all over again.

In the weeks we’d spent together since I’d been released from the hospital, he’d fallen in love with me all over again.

He was in love with me.

There were so many questions I had for him, like why he hadn’t made it clear when he kissed me twelve years ago—a kiss which resulted in him not being able to get the taste of me off his tongue in all that time—that he didn’t just love me but was in love with me.

So much would have been different.

It would have changed everything. At least, I think it would have.

So many unanswered questions, and yet, I didn’t care about talking to get any responses from him.

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