“Do you feel like you’re ready for this to end?”
“No. But even though things have changed between us, I haven’t changed.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I don’t need you to. I just need... more of this. I can’t keep staying with youknowing what you look like naked, sleeping down the hall from you, trying to stay in my own room. I can’t.”
He couldn’t do it either. She was just one that was brave enough, honest enough to admit it. She was the one that had faced the terrifying reality that they couldn’t go back. Maybe that was why thinking of them as children made him ache. Because back then they hadn’t crossed this line. Hadn’t complicated things.
That’s not it, and you know it.
“You’re my best friend,” she whispered.
“You’re mine too.”
She was supposed to be here with someone else, and she wasn’t. She was here with him. She’d been here with him for a long time.
Part of him wanted to trust her, with everything.
But he found that he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. So he just held her. It was the closest thing to that feeling he had the other day. The closest thing to freedom.
But one thing he knew for sure about things like this. The line didn’t hold forever. Eventually, it would break. Because in the end, there was very little that you could trust to last. Very little that you could trust to be true. But for all this time she had been one of them.
He didn’t know why, but it filled him with a sense of dread.
So he just held on to her tighter.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The rest of the trip passed in a blur. And before Rue knew, it was time for them to go home. The real risk had been on that night they’d gone out. When she had told him she didn’t want it to be over. Ever since the zip lining she had realized that she needed to tell him. Ever since she had given in, done the terrifying thing. Lay back and spread her arms and truly let go.
She had known that they couldn’t be done.
Because she couldn’t... She couldn’t go back.
They had to go forward. It was the only option. Anything else would be dishonest. Anything else would be a disservice to them and who they were.
Who they had always been.
But she had been doing a disservice to herself for a whole lot of years.
She had been so afraid of big feelings because she had seen them play out in such a toxic way. But she had denied herself. She had denied herself true passion. She had denied herself what she really wanted.
She wanted Justice.
What she hadalwayswanted was a life with him, and she had never been willing to let go of him entirely, but she had wanted to take those feelings, totake that pain and divide it. Asher was for romance, to marry, to have children with.
She had determined she was never to fling herself against Justice and his issues, because she would only get hurt.
As they drove back toward Four Corners, she looked at him, at his profile, and for the first time in her life she finally let herself admit the truth. The truth that had lived inside of her since she was a little girl. The truth she’d spent years trying to ignore, suppress, and minimize.
Justice King was the love of her life.
When he’d bent over that textbook, unable to sound out the words, he’d been the love of her life. When he’d given her that necklace in the barn, he’d been the love of her life. When he’d given her the blue necklace, the day she was supposed to marry another man, he’d been the love of her life.
It had been him. Always him.
With the deepest, truest part of herself, she loved him.
It had taken her until now to realize it. Because she had never seen love. Not like this. True and enduring. Selfless. For years their love hadn’t been based on romance or sex; it had just been there. Real and as bright as the sunrise.
