Page 121 of When the Stars Fall
I reached for my ginger-infused cocktail and took a fortifying drink before I met his eyes across the table. “Why do you always do this to me?”
“What do I do to you?”
“You bring me to a beautiful place that looks like my dream home. The home we planned together. You make me forget for a little while. You make me... want something I can’t have anymore.”
“Who says we can’t start over? Who says we can’t have that life we dreamed about?”
I shook my head.
“Do you still love me?”
“That was never a question. I havealwaysloved you.”It was you who stopped loving me.
“Then I don’t see what the problem is.”
I laughed bitterly. “Seriously, Jude? After you left, I kept waiting for you to come back. Even just a phone call or a message. Anything to let me know you were still... out there, thinking of me. I had no way to contact you. You just disappeared and I didn’t know where you were or if you were okay. I kept imagining the worst case scenario.”
“Not a single day went by that I didn’t think of you.”
“Thoughts without action mean nothing. You’re the one who always told me that. I get that you were going through a horrible time. I get that your head was in a bad place. But what I’ll never understand is why you felt like you had to go through all that on your own. You broke your promise. And you know what? After all the sadness wore off, I was so angry at you. I hated you for leaving me. I hated you for enlisting. And that was how I got through the bad times. By being angry with you. By blaming you. And now you come back here... and you expect me to put my faith in you again?”
His jaw clenched and he looked out over the rolling hills, the beautiful scenery ruined by our ugly truths. “I’m not the same man I was when I left you.”
“I can see that. But I’m not the same girl you left behind. I need to be there for Noah. I need to stay strong for him. And if I let you in again and it doesn’t work out, it would destroy me. I can’t go through that kind of pain again.”
“So that’s it?” His eyes got hard like he had any right to question me. “You’re just giving up.”
“This isn’t giving up. It’s self-preservation. How many times can one heart break, Jude?” I tossed my napkin on the table and pushed back my chair, walking out on him and leaving him alone at the table.
Chapter Forty-Two
Jude
How many timescan one heart break, Jude?
That was the question that kept running through my head as I drove. I could have told her that hearts don’t break. They were made of muscle. Left neglected and malnourished, muscles atrophied. But you could build them up by putting in the work, and you could make them stronger. That was what we had to do. Feed our hearts. Make them stronger.
Our love story had played out like a fucking tragedy. Redemption never came easy but I was up to the task.
Lila was silent, her posture rigid, the tension thick. But even so, I kept glancing at her. She looked so fucking beautiful in that green dress that matched her eyes, shoulders bare, and her hair falling in waves down her back. I wanted to fist my hand in it, drag her across the center console and crush my lips against hers. Slide my hand up her thigh and sink my fingers inside her. I wanted to taste her sweetness and see if it was everything I remembered. I knew it would be.
I needed to stop. This was no time to have sex on the brain, but fuck, it had been so long.
“Where are we going? This isn’t the way home.”
Ignoring her protests, I kept driving to the tune of The Weeknd’s “Earned It.” Message received. I had to earn the right to touch her again.
“Jude, just take me home.”
Not like this. No fucking way. “Our date isn’t over yet.”
She slumped in her seat and crossed her arms over her chest, staring out the windshield as we barreled down the expressway, Austin bound. The playlist I’d made especially for her was the soundtrack of our ups and downs over the past two decades. Twenty years of love and loss, joy and pain and she was quick to pick up on that.
“You chose all this music on purpose,” she accused when the Black Keys song started playing.
“Everything I do has a purpose.Youare my purpose.”
“Youare annoying.”
