I forced a smile. “It’s okay.”
He turned his head to look at me. “But you’re here.”
I felt the tears that I was desperately trying not to let fall. My heart was breaking. I knew I would eventually be okay, but it didn’t make the pain just stop. It would take years before I would be able to move on. I knew deep down I would never stop loving him. He would always live in a little corner of my heart.
He reached across the water between us. His hand closed around the nose of my board and he pulled. My board slid through the water toward his until they bumped together softly, side by side once again. His hand came up to wipe the tears I hoped he wouldn’t see. He pressed his forehead to mine. I closed my eyes.
“It’s not okay,” he said.
“What?”
“I left you behind once,” he said quietly. “It ate me alive for years.” He exhaled slowly through his nose. I felt the warmth of it against my lips. “There hasn’t been a single day you didn’t cross my mind. Not one. I told myself that was just the way it was. That I was born into a life where getting the girl I actuallywanted wasn’t in the cards, because we came from different worlds.” His thumb traced the line of my jaw. “Different coasts. Different everything. And I told myself that was just the truth of it.”
I kept my eyes closed. I was afraid to open them.
“For the last few years,” he said, “I believed the lie I told myself.”
The boards rocked gently beneath us. The ocean breathed in and out. His forehead was still pressed to mine. It was an intimate connection. Far more intimate than the sex we had thirty minutes ago. I felt him trying to speak to my very soul.
“And then I came back here,” he said.
I opened my eyes.
He was looking at me. Right into my eyes with nothing held back and nowhere to hide. The kind of look that had wrecked me the first time I laid eyes on him.
“Every single lie I told myself for four years fell apart in about forty-eight hours,” he said. “Because you were still you. And I was still me. And whatever this is between us, Summer, it is not something I made up. It is not something I’m going to survive losing again. I know it’s one of those things that’s rare. We’re so lucky to have found it. I can’t let it go. Fate keeps bringing me back to you. I’ve been a damn fool the last seven years trying to convince myself it wasn’t real.”
I didn’t trust my voice. I pressed my lips together hard and nodded once with our foreheads still touching. I could keep the sob from escaping, but there was no stopping the tears.
“I don’t have the answer yet,” he said. “I want you to know that’s not because I don’t want to. I want to so badly it scares the hell out of me. But I’m not going to make you a promise I haven’t thought all the way through. You deserve better than a promise I can’t keep.”
“I know,” I managed.
“I’m working on it,” he said. “I need you to believe that.”
“I do.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he said.
I cringed because I did feel a little guilty for making him stress. But I had a feeling he was going to be thinking about the situation whether I said it or not. And that was proof he did care. He wasn’t counting down the minutes until he could leave me. He was cherishing the time we did have.
“And what have you come up with?” I asked softly.
“I feel like I can’t live without you,” he said.
My heart squeezed. We were both in an impossible position.
“But can you live without them?” I whispered.
I knew he was very close to his family. His brothers. His nieces and nephews. His parents. What if he resented me because he stayed in Surfside? What if my home wasn’t enough for him? What ifIwasn’t enough for him?
“I can.”
“Colt, you have a whole family in Texas. And I feel so selfish even suggesting it because I don’t think I could ever leave my family.”
“Is that what you think?” he asked.
I was ashamed. I looked away, unable to look into his soulful eyes. It hurt. We were hurting each other because we both wanted each other.