“And you’ve kept it all these years.”
“I have.”
I blink. “Why?”
He takes a step forward, and while it’s steady, something about him isn’t. There’s a part that was guarded all month that seems to have been unlocked.
“Why do you think?”
I close my eyes, the sweet scent of him now everywhere around me.
He steps even closer, his breath warm against my ear as he whispers, “Hasn’t it haunted you, too? That we never got our chance?”
I’m trembling, heart like a hummingbird in my throat. If only he knew.
“You told me to go,” I whisper on an exhale.
“I couldn’t ask you to stay,” Eli says now, looking as pained as he did that night eleven years ago.
I want to tell him that he should’ve, that if he’d given me a reason, I might have taken it, and yet I know he’s right. I never would’ve been happy here, no matter how much I loved him.
“I still would’ve liked a goodbye,” he says, his voice smaller. “I thought we had more time. Weeks, or days, at least. Why leave like that?”
My throat is tight, but I still say, “Because I knew if I saw you, I wouldn’t be able to leave, and Ineededto leave.” The desperation in my words gets to him, because his eyes soften. I think a part of him must’ve known something had happened to get me to escape that way. And I realize now he needs more than that. “You remember the promise I made you when I was fifteen?”
His eyebrows string together.
“You told me if…” I inhale deeply, hating to relive that memory for even a second. “You told me if he ever lifted a hand at me, I had to leave. You made me promise.”
Now his face doesn’t just soften. It melts, every trace of anger disappearing from his traits, replaced not by pity, but by hurt for the girl I once was. The girl I fear I still am, sometimes.
“But I’m sorry I left that way,” I tell him now. “If I could’ve stayed, I would have.”
“I know you would,” he says, and then he’s right there, his nose to my temple, and he’s inhaling deeply, almost like he wants to commit me to memory the way I did by going through his room.
His charcoal T-shirt looks soft. I reach forward, tracing a soft hand against the fabric over his stomach, and it indeed is soft, and hard, and warm. One of his hands lands on the small of my back, his touch as delicate as mine.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Anything.”
“Why haven’t you kissed me?”
I feel his sharp inhale against my skin, but he doesn’t move away.
I’m leaving tomorrow. I have nothing left to lose. “Tell me if I imagined it, but I thought there was… something here, still. Thought you might’ve wanted to.”
“You think I haven’t touched you for lack of wanting?” He leans down even closer, his lips brushing against my neck as he whispers, “Think I haven’t dreamed of the way your mouth tastes?”
My inhales are shallow, head light. I arch to give him more space against me. His breath is warm on my skin. I want more.
Just as I’m about to beg for it, he pulls away and my body becomes frigid. “But I’m not kissing you goodbye. I can’t do it.”
I squeeze my thumbs under my fingers, crack them. Eli reaches forth, and I have a second of hope that maybe he’s changed his mind, but he only pulls on my fingers so my hands loosen.
“So that’s it, then?” I feel too raw, too exposed.
He drags a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
