Page 43 of Over You
“Yeah.” I felt myself smile.
“I always beat you.”
“Except that one time.” I laughed at the memory of him sprinting through the pelting rain with his arms flailing.
He would have made it to the apartment first had he not been a dick and glanced over his shoulder to call me a turtle. That’s when he had slipped in a puddle and gashed his shin on the concrete step.
“Oh, the time you left me wounded on the bottom step?” He gathered my hair to the side and pressed a kiss to the back of my neck.
“You took off on two. Serves you right for cheating.”
His warm breath fanned over my skin. “I miss those days, you know?”
“Yeah. Me too.”
Silence stretched out.
“Come back to California with me?”
Had my soul had its way, I would have torn open my ribcage and handed my beating heart to him. “Spencer. I can’t.”
“You can.”
I rolled over to face him. “This.” I motioned between our unclothed bodies. “It doesn’t change anything. Of course, I still love you. Of course I miss you, but Spencer, I can’t go back to that cycle of. . .”
“Give me one more chance.”
“We’ve done this before.” But how I stupidly wanted to do it again.
“Seven days.” His nostrils flared. “Just give me seven days.”
“For what?”
“To remind you why we belong together.”
It wasn’t an issue of me thinking we didn’t belong together. I knew we did. Our energies blended perfectly.
Before he had started using, there wasn’t a moment I ever wanted to be away from him, and there was a sense of peace and calm in his arms that I had never found anywhere else—Not watching the sun rise over the Alps or the sun set over the Mediterranean. I had literally searched the world, and nothing came close to him. He was my one, and together or apart, that would forever be true. “It’s not that.”
His palm swept along my jaw. The familiar feel of his calloused fingers stirred a flurry of emotion. “Seven days, babe. Let me start by staying clean for seven days.”
“And then what?”
“Then give me seven more. . .”
I chewed at my lip.
“The first time I fuck up, I’ll sign the papers, whether that’s tomorrow or ten years from today.”
My chin fell to my chest, and he placed a finger beneath it, lifting my gaze to his. “You left the drugs. You didn’t leave me.” His brow furrowed. “I would rather die than live without you.”
“I’d rather live without you than watch you die.”
His lips pressed to the corner of my mouth. “You won’t have to do either of those this time. I promise.”
So many promises. So many hopes for things I doubted he could give.
There’s a proverb that a man shouldn’t trust his own heart, and I had to agree because this was hopelessly foolish. But when I got down to it, love was nothing more than a hopeless fool willing to give up the world for one chance at forever.
