Page 15 of Spring Forward
“Do you know how many people I’ve dated since you left?” he asked.
She didn’twantto know.
“None. I’ve had a date here or there, but not a relationship.”
If she’d doubted before that she still had feelings for him, the relief she felt at hearing that would have told her for certain that she did.
“No one I went out with was ever what I wanted.” His hands slid up her arms, her shoulders, her neck, and settled on either side of her face. “No one was everyou.”
She closed her eyes, unsure if the tears she felt building up were happiness or confusion or fear.
“I know your dad walked out on you,” he went on. “Every man your mom has ever been involved with has left too.” His thumbs rubbed gently along her jaw. “I have a feeling what you were afraid of was that I would eventually do the same thing. I thought, while we were together, that you knew that wasn’t the kind of guy I was, that you got that about us. Obviously I need to be more blunt.”
She felt him lightly kiss her forehead. His lips trailed past her temple to her ear.
“No one will ever be you, Maddi,” he whispered. “I haven’t moved on after two years, even thoughyouwalked out onme.”
She rested her hands against his chest. She wanted so badly to believe him, but he was promising her the moon. She could not pin all her hopes on impossible dreams.
“You cut off everything between us, but my heart couldn’t move on," he said. "There was no one who fit there like you do, no one who fit me like you do.” His arms wrapped around her, but his face stayed close to hers, his words whispered directly into her ear. “There has been no one for me but you ever since the day you sat next to me in high school biology. I didn’t get up the nerve to ask you out until college, and only after going through agony, fearing you’d pick a school in another state, and I’d never see you again.” He kissed her temple, his arms firmly around her. “I’m not perfect. We’ve had our disagreements, even a fight or two. But we were good together. We always have been.”
“I know.” Somehow she found the voice to say what she was thinking. “But believing in a miracle only makes the disappointment worse when it doesn’t happen.”
He leaned his forehead against hers. “Then trust me. Look back on all we’ve been through together. Listen to what I’m saying now. All of those things are reasons to believe that this is real. You have to trust me that much.”
“That’s a lot.” Trusting someone with her heart was enormous when she knew how fragile an organ it really was.
“I know,” he said, repeating her earlier words. “I’m only asking you to trust me enough to try.”
She opened her eyes and looked into his, so close to hers. “Sometimes a person is too broken to fix.”
“You don’t need to be fixed. You just need to be loved.” He shifted the tiniest bit, and their lips touched. It was a tentative moment, neither of them giving over to the sensation of being together again.
His scent. His touch. His kiss. Her heart pounded and turned. She couldn’t help but steal a moment of that to keep for later.
Her hands slipped about his middle, and she returned his kiss with none of her earlier hesitation. His fingers threaded through her hair, cradling her head and pulling her to him until nothing remained between them but the air they breathed.
Madison poured two years of loneliness and regret and fear into that desperate moment, knowing she couldn’t stay, knowing she didn’t have the strength to put herself so entirely on the line. He would break her heart, and she would never recover.
The first tear trickled from her eyes, running down her face before rolling onto his. She wiped at it with her thumb as she pulled back.
“I can’t do this.” Her voice broke. Her heart cracked a little more.
“I know.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it gently. “I know.”
She stepped back, moving toward the door.
“Maddi?”
She looked back over her shoulder.
He gave her a tiny, tender, painful smile. “When you’re ready, come back to me.”
Chapter Eight
Madison had spent so much time during her first day back at work talking about APRs and refinances and small-business loans that she was tired of the sound of her own voice. Foot traffic slowed down in the branch midafternoon. Madison leaned back in her chair as Beth stepped inside her cubicle and dropped into the seat across her desk.
“Cancún was amazing.” Beth sighed long and dramatic. “You should have come.”
