Page 91 of Only Be Mine

“You think I don’t love you,” I said.

“I think you do,” he answered gently. “I just don’t think I’m the only one.”

My throat burned.

John’s face rose unbidden - his smile, his hands, the way his presence used to feel like gravity. I’d learned how to live around that absence, how to build a life that didn’t collapse beneath it.

But I had never truly let it go.

“I don’t know how to erase him,” I whispered.

Trevor stepped closer. Not touching me yet, giving me space.

“I’m not asking you to erase him,” he said. “I’m asking you to choose.”

The word echoed in the narrow hall.

Choose.

As if love were that simple.

“I need to know,” he continued softly, “if tomorrow is about us… or if it’s about proving you survived him.”

That cut deeper than anything else had.

I looked down at my hands, the faint tremor there, the way my ring caught the light.

“I’m afraid,” I admitted.

“Of marrying me?”

“No,” I said. “Of letting go. Of being wrong. Of waiting my whole life for something that was never coming.”

He reached for me then, resting his hands lightly on my arms.

“You’re allowed to live,” he said. “You’re allowed to be happy. Even if it’s messy. Even if it doesn’t look the way you imagined.”

Tears slipped free, silent and unstoppable.

“I loved him,” I said.

“I know.”

“I still do.”

“I know.”

The fact that he didn’t argue, that he let the truth exist, nearly undid me.

“I can’t promise I’ll ever stop missing him,” I said. “But I can promise I won’t leave you alone in it.”

Trevor closed his eyes, relief and grief crossing his face at once.

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

When John disappeared, most people faded with him. Even Seth, his best friend, his would-be best man eventually stopped calling. Stopped showing up. It was as if the world decided that losing him meant losing me too.

But Trevor stayed.