Choosing You (Gravity Hill #3)

6. Chapter 3

I know he’s following me like I know the organ in my chest will beat whether or not he returns to the old Banks, the one before trauma gripped his life and made him doubt the world.

Even me.

Knowing he’s there always gives me hope that one day something will just click and he’ll be my Banks again. It’s foolish, and I know I shouldn’t wish that he would just let it go. But he’s shown time and time again that he has no interest in working through what happened, no interest in a life with me.

Pain strikes me again, my chest goes taut with it. My heart beats slow, and I feel like I’m going to be sick.

Stopping my strides to double over and place my hand over the traitorous organ in my chest, I wait for the suffocating feeling to end. It won’t, not fully anyway.

“Are you okay?” Banks’s footsteps are loud, and his breaths are heavy as he catches up to me. His shadow moves in front of my eyes as he lifts his hand, as if he’s going to touch me, but thinks better of it and puts it back down. “Henry?”

“I’m fine,” I croak out through tightly clenched teeth. I don’t want to cry, God, please.

His knees pop as he bends down so he can get as close to eye level as he can get.

“Fancy…” He trails off. My nickname on his tongue feels like warm syrup drizzled over ice cream. It sizzles and gives me goosebumps.

“Don’t,” I whisper, hiccuping on a sob that wants to break out of my chest. “Just… don’t, please .”

I can’t help the waver in my voice, the way it cracks and bleeds, as if my chest is spilling everything in it onto the sidewalk between us. He knows how much I love him, and he knows I’ll wait however long it takes for him to realize that we are soulmates.

We can be like Creed and Fern, Talon and Cin. We can have what they have. And I know it will take him as long as he needs to process his mother’s death, but hell, I’ve given him almost two years already.

I’m tired of hurting.

“I’m sorry,” he says. It’s a whisper shared between two broken boys who have no idea how to sever the tie that binds them.

Turning my head, I find him closer than I expect. His lips are just a breath away, and my nose bumps his. I close my eyes, envisioning us like this but in totally different circumstances.

He doesn’t let it last. Instead he says, “We should get back.”

I nod, waiting as he stands and following his movements. We walk side by side, our hands brush, and electricity runs up my arm. His presence alone is intoxicating, and I worry by the time we reach the dorm I’ll be nothing but a willing body.