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I didn’t mean to blurt out the nickname, but I can’t take itback.
In that instant, I’m remembering the time I went to see her, two months after I leftDallas.
It was after the shit with my dad and withZeke.
I rode all night to get to there because I needed to see her, to know something in this world madesense.
She had no idea I was there, sitting on my bike, the ache of weeks of not sleeping and hours of riding heavy in mybones.
I wanted to tell her I’d fucked up—not because I lost my contract, but because I missed her and I hated that I couldn’t text her funny things from my day, that I didn’t get to hear her low voice in my ear… that I didn’t get to kiss her, to feel her breath mix withmine.
I wanted to say Jax was wrong, that I’d be willing to do whatever it took to be the guy sheneeded.
I hadn’t thought of what would happen when I got to her, just that when I did, everything would somehow beokay.
It wasn’t. At least, it wasn’t the okay Iexpected.
She was standing outside the library where she was working for the summer with a guy—not someone from Oakwood, or I would’ve known him. She was smiling and laughing, and without so much as looking at me, it was clear that we were done. She was overit.
I had to be over ittoo.
When she responds, her voice is lower, more vulnerable. “If you’d told me you chose your career over me, I would’ve understood. But you just left. I know it was high school, but one second you were sleeping next to me and kissing me and touching me, and the next you were gone. Did I do something to fuck itup?”
“No.Never.”
The ache is more than physical now, as if it’s pulling at the corners of my soul. Talking to each other without seeing each other feels safe, as if there are no stakes, no rules—as if every word is no sooner spoken thanforgotten.
I drop my head back, shutting my eyes and remembering that day, seeing her with that guy. “You got over me,” I say, needingconfirmation.
“I wrote you sixty-three times. Emails, texts, letters. All summer, halfway through the fall.” Her low laugh is dry. “I didn’t send them, didn’t try to reach you, because I didn’t want to be selfish. I knew you chose your future, and that was enough forme.”
The anguish rips through me, and I force myself to stop tearing at the edges of the Polaroids in my fingers. The backs of my eyes burn, and I swallow against the emotion rising up mythroat.
“It wasn’t enough.” My voice comes out rough. “You taught me to want things I never let myself want. Fuck, Annie. You taught me todream.”
Her shallow intake of breath has me turning, and once I do, I can’t lookaway.
Here, in a black bra and panties with wet hair sliding over her shoulders, she’s more than adream.
My gaze drags down her small breasts, her stomach, the flare of herhips.
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t attracted to her, but now she’s every wish and regret and ache wrapped into a singleperson.
I was a boy who cared too much. She was a girl infatuated with something she didn’tunderstand.
None of that’s responsible for the way the air crackles between usnow, for the way her eyes widen in warning as if she feels ittoo.
“Tyler…”
I close the distance between us, one slow step at a time. When I come to a stop inches away from her, the blood pounds in my veins, my ears, mytemples.
“Give thoseback.”
Her voice has an edge it didn’t a moment ago, and I blink when I realize her gaze has dropped to my hands—to what I’ve forgotten toconceal.
She lunges for the photos, and I hold them out ofreach.
When her half-naked body brushes my chest through my T-shirt, she’s close enough I can smell her light floral scent, and I want to drop the photos and tangle my fingers in her hair, drag her angry mouth tomine.
