Page 112 of The Puck Bunny

She looks up and flashes those crazy green eyes showing all her emotions like a telescope to her heart and soul.

Gripping the door frame, I stand through a wave of gut-clenching pain, so different from the guilty stab through my shoulder blades and no less intense.

“Come inside.” My voice sounds like it belongs to a man who needed to quit his four-pack-a-day habit years ago.

She steps past me, careful not to touch, but it doesn’t matter because I feel her warmth, the cord of energy connecting us.

It takes all my strength to keep from gravitating to her, from embracing her and swallowing her whole like she’s the magic pill I need to make me alive, like an addict who needs a hit.

Fuck.

“You got some furniture,” she says, but she doesn’t go past the entryway before she stops and faces me.

I keep a distance, struggling between self-preservation and going to her, but then I throw all caution aside. “Look, I know we were supposed to have dinner, but I have something to tell you. It’s important.”

I clear my throat so I can sound human. “You know you can tell me anything.” Except the one thing I have a bad feeling you’re going to say. My heart thuds loud in my ears like it’s trying to shield me from hearing something terrible as I wait for her to do just that.

She stands there looking at me, looking small and vulnerable, but straight and strong at the same time. Her eyes are bright and her chin quivers and I’m about to break in two and sweep her into my arms.

But she stops me by yanking the ring from her finger, then holding it out to me.

“Jesus, Sara.” I croak the words.

“I don’t want a fake-it-til-we-make-it engagement, Quinn. Truthfully, I’m not ready for any engagement. I want to start a new job, move into my own place, and stand on my own. Be a real adult. My own person. I need to be an independent adult before I’m ready for any kind of relationship.”

Her words pelt me like fireballs, their truths branding me with each strike. I can’t argue with her. I understand her completely. But my heart pleads with the reality gods for mercy, for hope, because it won’t let go.

“This must be what it feels like to be in love.” The words seep from my bleeding soul, my voice sounding normal through the pain and gratitude and muck of my leftover baggage.

She laughs a watery laugh and sniffs. “I think so. I’m feeling it, too,” she says.

I bite down on my tongue to keep myself from shouting, “Then why?” because I know why.

A person can’t make it no matter how much they fake it until they have the muscle power to see it through.

“No pain, no gain,” I say.

She nods because she gets it.

“So, dinner is out?” I say to break the tension, to loosen the grip of pain in my gut before my spine snaps and I can’t stand, can’t hold my course steady and give her what she needs—her freedom and my support.

She smiles, tears streaming now. “No dinner. No… anything.”

I see stars like I’ve blacked out from a shot through the heart. Like I’ve exploded from the inside out. “Sara—”

“I know. But I can’t… I’m not strong enough to do this any other way. Not now.”

I grasp onto the thinnest thread of hope she offers. Not now. “Maybe… someday?”

She nods. She’s still holding her diamond ring in the palm of her hand, open and vulnerable.

It’s like she’s handing me back my heart.

I take the ring from her palm and squeeze like I’m trying to hold myself together.

“I’ll see you sometime,” she says as she passes by me to the door.

“Sometime soon,” I say.