Page 98 of Going Viral for Christmas
She shrugs. “Don’t make it a thing.”
“It’s a thing.” I close the gap. “You didn’t have to. But you did.”
I’m so close now, the fruity vanilla scent in her shampoo drifts into my senses. The tension is electric.
Her eyes flick to mine, then away. “It was something to do, that’s it. Nothing. More.”
I fucking hate those two words.
“You know what that tells me, Bells?” Her throat bobs as I continue inching closer. “It tells me you care. Somewhere under all that sarcasm and self-preservation, you feel something, just like I do.”
Ava stiffens. I watch her fold into herself, trying to disappear.
“Don’t do that,” I say, softer now. “Please don’t hide from this. Or from me.”
“I’m not hiding,” she lies. I know this because her voice cracks halfway through.
Our chests nearly touch. “You could’ve let this be simple, kept it small. Instead, you made it personal. You reached out. You did a kind and thoughtful and terrifying thing, and you didn’t even realize it.”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” she whispers.
The war inside her rages, fueled by a desperate need to believe, so she doesn’t fall apart.
“It meanseverythingto me.”
Ava’s chin trembles. She swallows. “We’ve been over this. You’re confused. You think your feelings are real and?—”
“They’re real. So. Fucking. Real.” There it goes, whatever thread of restraint I had left, snapped clean in half. So much for caution. It’s too late to pull back now. I’m already in freefall.
Fuck it.
“The truth is, the second I saw you for the first time, standing with your chin lifted like you had something to prove and your mouth was ready to fight me on every panel point…Iknew.”
Ava’s face scrunches in confusion.
“It wasn’t in a convenient, romanticized, predestined sort of way,” I clarify. “I knew in my chest. In my gut. In the part of me that never shuts up when it matters. My heart whispered:Her. She’s your journey.And I’ve been chasing that whisper ever since.”
Ava’s eyes fly to mine. The world narrows to just us–just this. Her walls are up, but they’re cracking. I can feel it.
She says, so quietly I almost miss it, “You only think you mean it, Soren. It’s lust. It’s the story. You’re the plot twist. Not the ending.”
The words hit so fucking hard.
My voice becomes a plea she can’t run from. “Then rewrite me.”
She flinches. I struck a buried nerve.
“Soren…”
“I want a story with you, Ava. No edits. No drafts. Only us.”
The tears shimmering in her eyes catch the light like fragile glass. She swipes them away fast, as if blotting out a weakness she refuses to show. It isn’t a weakness, though. It’s proof. Proof that my words slipped past her walls, sank deep into places she doesn’t let anyone touch. And for one staggering moment, I see her—unguarded, human in a way that makes my heart hurt and my resolve sharpen.
“No,” she breathes. “When it ends, and it will. The internet will eat me alive. I won’t know how to survive it.”
That one, tiny word lands as a battering ram straight to the gut. I stagger under the weight of her fear. She’s so sure, already written our ending in ink.
“What happened to you?”
