Page 46 of Choosing Her
I love you.
Sorry. Just had to say it again.
Crossy
P.S. did I mention I still love you? Because I do. And I wish I’d been brave enough to kiss you again when I had the chance
I blinked away the tears that were gathering in my eyes as I looked up to Crossy. I guess I wasn’t good enough at hiding the tears, though, because one slipped down my cheek, and he immediately stepped in to brush it away with his thumb.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
“You didn’t,” I said honestly.
I looked up at the letters again, all of them gathered in my hands. They existed all this time—when I was wondering why he and I just couldn’t make anything work. Why he had to be around all the time, first with Naomi and then with Bear. Why he had to hate me the way that he did.
He told me that he loved Naomi. Now he told me he didn’t want me anymore. And then all this time…
“Why would you do this? Why didn’t you tell me before now?”
“How could I tell you? How could I tell you when you were Naomi’s sister?” He let out a breath and shook his head. “You have no idea how hard I looked for you, Saylor. Everywhere I looked, everywhere. I’m telling you, the only reason I found Naomi was because I was looking for you.”
I looked at the second letter again.So I guess I did get the dorm wrong after all. Naomi asked if I wanted to go out sometime.
“You gave it to Naomi instead,” I whispered. Suddenly everything came clicking into place. I always thought it was such a strange coincidence that he had ended up with my sister. Somehow, in a way, I thought he’d done it on purpose, that he knew who she was and that he had gone after her because of it like he just wanted to hurt me. Tears sprung up in my eyes. “You were looking for me.”
“I lost the Polaroid,” he said. “I’m so sorry, but I lost it.”
I laughed softly, almost choking on my tears. I’d spent days waiting for him to call. Weeks crying when I realized he wouldn’t. All of this because the stupid polaroid I’d written my number on for him.
I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. “It’s been ten months, and it took you this long to tell me.”
“In my defense, you hated me from the moment I stepped up on your doorstep. If I told you back then, would you have said, would you have kissed me back?”
I tried to picture it: that moment when Naomi asked me to open the door because her boyfriend was there, and I thought there must have been some mistake because there was no way this boy, the boy that I had kissed, could be with her.
Would I have kissed him back?
I wish I could nod and say absolutely, that I could pin this on him and say that he should have come to me sooner. But no, because if I’d gone along with it then, it would have meant watching him break Naomi’s heart. And even though she won in every aspect of our lives, and even though I hated her for it sometimes, I also knew I could never do that to my sister.
“No,” I admitted softly. “I wouldn’t have.”
He sat down on the couch next to me, his leg brushing mine. “And now?”
It was such a loaded question. The situation with Naomi hadn’t changed, not that much. They may not have been dating anymore, but she was still his ex-girlfriend. She would still feel betrayed if she saw me with him.
But… she’d moved on. And this boy was standing in front of me, telling me that the very thing that she thought their relationship was based on was meant for me. Did she know it? Did she do it on purpose? Or was she just some awful victim of circumstance?
And was that awful coincidence enough for me to throw away the love of my life forever? Sticking by Naomi’s side would mean telling him we couldn’t be together because he had dated her once, months ago. It meant letting her and what she wanted dictate my life when she never even loved him.
“If you kissed me now,” I whispered, almost not believing the words as they came out of my own mouth, “I wouldn’t pull away.”
Maybe it was a testament to how long Crossy and I had been waiting that he didn’t hesitate for a second. I would always consider our first kiss my favorite—the one when we didn’t know each other, where he was just a boy and I was just a girl and we were having the most magical night of our lives. But this was a different kind of special. It was the specialness of knowing who he was and that he loved me and that I loved him and that wecould make this work. It was the knowledge that tonight, when he walked away, he wouldn’t be saying goodbye forever.
CHAPTER 24
saylor
NEW YEAR’SEVE - MIDNIGHT
