Page 8 of Tangled Up In You
We hadn’t said anything about what we were doing next. No words had been needed. Our feelings had been clear as day. We knew each other on such a level that we’d often known what the other was thinking without saying a word.
Our bond had always been strong. Inseverable.
Until now.
“What’s happening to us, Hunter?” I asked, noticing how rough my voice sounded. Just the night before, we’d talked about being in love and how we’d always be together.
How quickly things changed.
Hunter didn’t answer right away. He watched a ripple in the water before slowly looking at me. “We grew up.”
I searched his face for any signs of hope. I didn’t want to accept that. It’d always been me and Hunter, and I didn’t want a life where that was different.
“Please come with me,” I practically begged. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe he’d get accepted into USC this late in the game, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still move to California with me. He could attend a different college down there; it didn’t have to be USC. I just needed him with me. “Please.”
“Why don’t you just stay here?” he suggested, stepping closer and pressing his face to my neck. His tears wet my skin. “You’d still have a shot at going pro by going through Arkansas.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled him closer.
My dreams were within reach. All I had to do was take that leap. However, by leaping toward those dreams, I’d be leaving Hunter behind. I’d be leaving the future we’d planned for ourselves in the rearview.
My arms tightened around him, and I would’ve done anything to stay in that moment for forever, but I couldn’t. And I knew my next words were going to shatter what little we both still held on to.
“I can’t stay here,” I whispered.
“If not for me than what about for your grandpa?” he asked, refusing to back down. He sounded desperate to change my mind.
But it only pissed me off more.
“Don’t put that shit on me,” I growled at him. “That’s a low blow and you know it.”
Hunter shoved away from me as tears fell from his eyes. “You’re such an asshole, Corbin Taylor.” His chin trembled with the emotion he was barely keeping at bay. “You have people here who love you and you’re just eager to throw it all away as if we’re nothing.”
Maybe it was a defense mechanism or perhaps I was just finally tired of his attitude, but I exploded with anger. “You’rethe asshole! You know how much this means to me, and yet all you can fucking think of is yourself and how it affectsyou.”
I pushed him. Hard.
Hunter stumbled and landed on his ass in the water. When he stared up at me, he looked so broken. Defeated.
I was too far gone with anger to care, and I screamed at him, “You’re just jealous, Hunter! I’m going to leave this town and make something of myself, and you’re going to be stuck here forever. All you’ll ever be is another kid who didn’t have the balls to chase what he wanted. I refuse to settle with this life, though.”
When his face crumbled with his grief, I turned my back on him. That was the last sight I had of him before running through the woods.
Before running away from him.
***
California was like a different planet. Growing up in a small, country town, I’d never seen anything quite like it. I sat in my dorm room at USC, not in the mood to unpack any of my things yet.
After my fight with Hunter, I hadn’t seen him again.
In the days following that, I packed up as much of my things as I could for the move, and I got the hell out of Willow, Arkansas. I’d looked back as I’d driven out of town. My whole life was there.
Hunter was there.
It was then I finally let myself cry for him: for what we’d lost. A part of me almost turned the car around—the part that was madly in love with him and probably always would be. My heart was broken, and the farther I got from him, the greater the pain became.
Sitting on my bed in the dorm at USC, that pain sprang back to life.
