Page 108 of Your Place or Mine

I sat there for a long time, trying to steady my breath.

“I didn’t plan this,” I whispered. “I wasn’tlookingfor anything. Especially not this. But when I’m around her, I can’t think straight. I want to argue with her just so I can hear her talk. I want to kiss her just to make her shut up.”

My laugh was bitter and raw.

“I’m losing it. That’s what’s happening because I shouldn’t want anyone. Not like this. Notnow.Not when you’re still everywhere. Not when you’re stillhere.”

I touched the edge of the stone.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I don’t know what I’m doing. But I can’t get her out of my head. And that kiss…”

I closed my eyes.

“It felt like waking up.”

My voice caught in my throat, and I hated how true it was.

Because Lydia was everything I told myself I didn’t want.

And yet she was burrowing into every part of me I thought I’d sealed shut.

I stayed there a long time.

Long enough for the sun to shift. For a shadow to pass across the grave.

Then I stood, brushing the dirt from my jeans.

“I’m not replacing you,” I said softly. “I could never.”

But as I walked back toward the truck, one truth circled my brain like a hawk overhead.

Lydia wasn’t just someone passing through.

She was going to change everything.

And I didn’t know if I was ready for that.

But I wasn’t sure I could stop it either.

The graveyard was quiet again.

Too quiet.

I’d meant to leave. Really, I had. But my legs wouldn’t budge.

So instead, I walked over and sat back down on the grass, elbows on my knees, letting the silence press in on me like a weighted blanket I didn’t ask for.

I didn’t want to think about Lydia anymore.

Didn’t want to replay the kiss, or the look in her eyes right after.

Didn’t want to imagine the thousand ways I’d already screwed it all up.

But her face kept showing up in my mind anyway—frustrated, fire-bright, eyes all lit up like she was about to go to war with me for the right reasons.

She looked alive in a way I hadn’t felt in years.

And it scared the hell out of me.

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