16. Chris
Chapter 16
Chris
Now
July 11 th
A nnie hasn’t gone far. She’s sitting on a curb in the hotel parking lot, arms wrapped around her up-drawn knees, watching the traffic. She doesn’t look like she’s been crying, but her eyes are watery. She gives me an uncertain smile as I drop down next to her.
I give her a minute to say something, but she doesn’t. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” she says with a dry laugh.
My chest feels like it’s about to cave in on itself. Last night, this morning—they meant everything to me. I don’t want to let her off the hook if what we did meant nothing to her, but if she wants to return to him, I want to make it easy. I have to ask. “Want me to take you home?”
She stares at me, a horrified look crossing her face, before she visibly shakes it off, gets up, and walks past me into the room.
Fuck.
I get to my feet and follow her in.
She’s disappeared into the bathroom. The sound of the shower starting warns me against knocking on the thin door. There’s nothing to do except put my stuff in the SUV and sit on my bed, waiting for her.
When she comes out twenty minutes later, she looks calm. “Breakfast?”
We’re not talking about it again, I guess. The uncertainty of it all has me feeling wrung out and ready to snap, but I’m hungry, so I nod.
We leave the hotel and head to our usual Topeka breakfast spot—a quaint diner with an all-day breakfast. Annie gets the French toast like she always does. I order a Western omelet like I always do. We discuss how the models look for the day and where we want to chase. It feels like we’re reading from a script neither of us is interested in.
Annie is quiet as we drive. I oscillate between wanting to ask her what last night and this morning meant to her and wanting to give her the space she needs. The effort to keep my mouth shut gives me a headache.
By mid-afternoon, cumulus towers spring up around us. We park near a campground in Kimball, South Dakota. The sky to the southwest is already getting dark, and a few discrete cells have popped up on the radar.
We’re waiting for storms to mature. I’m waiting for Annie to break my heart. I don’t know what she’s waiting for. I don’t know what she’s thinking or feeling.
All the waiting plus the humidity is getting to me, and I’ve spent the last twenty minutes pacing. I nearly jump out of my skin when a severe thunderstorm warning goes up on a cell to the south of us.
Annie isn’t taking photos of the cumulus towers or the wildflowers. She’s leaning against a stone bollard marking the campground’s entrance, looking sad and lost.
We can’t do this.
I walk over to her, ignoring the wary look she gives me. “We should go home.”
“For fuck’s sake,” she mutters, pushing off the stone and walking away.
“I’m distracted,” I call after her. “You’re distracted. It’s not safe.”
She stops, her head tipping back like she’s staring at the sky. “Chris, I can’t—”
“You need to stop running away from your problems.” It’s out of my mouth before I can stop it.
Annie’s head snaps down. Her eyes are stormier than the horizon as she stomps up to me. “I needed time, and you kicked me off the chase team. You keep trying to throw me back to Marc.”
“I want you to be happy—”
“Do you know why Marc called this morning?” she asks, crossing her arms. “Not to beg me to come back. He called to apologize. He said some shitty things when I broke it off. Most of them were true, but that only made this whole thing harder.” Her lips twist up into a wry smile. “No one likes to hear how bad they’ve treated someone else. I’m carrying a lot of guilt right now.”
“You’re not—”
She holds up a hand. “Don’t make excuses for me. My entire relationship with Marc was based on the lie that my heart was free to be his.” Her hand drops to her side, and she fidgets with the hem of her borrowed t-shirt. “I wasn’t running from my wedding, Chris. I was running to you.”
To me.
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
Annie doesn’t notice. She’s looking everywhere except at me as she continues in an agitated, breathless voice. “But you keep pushing me away, so maybe you don’t want me, maybe you’re just doing a really shitty job trying to fix this. Maybe you slept with me because you thought it was what I needed. I don’t know what you’re feeling, but I’m no longer running from what I feel. I’ve tried so hard not to love you, and every year, every storm season, I fail miserably because I only love you more.”
She loves me. My entire world stops to rearrange all the little pieces of our past into something new. So many of the moments between us deepen now that I know I wasn’t the only one with butterflies and a pounding heart.
I wasn’t willing to risk losing my chase partner to what I thought were unrequited feelings, but knowing she loved me makes me keenly aware of everything we missed by pushing our feelings aside.
Not anymore.
“You aren’t saying anything,” Annie says with a highly uncomfortable laugh. She takes a step backward. “Okay, well…now you know, and I’m not running, I swear, I just need a moment by myself to—”
She bolts.
I catch her in two strides.
She gasps as I pull her around and into my arms, and I silence the sound with my lips on hers. It takes a second for the shock to wear off, for her arms to wrap around me, and for her to kiss me back. When I pull away to look into her eyes, they’re shimmering with tears.
I brush a lock of hair from her face. “Chasing with you has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Sitting next to you, day after day, mile after mile, year after year, close enough to touch but knowing I can’t, having to say goodbye to you every June, knowing I won’t see you again until April—it was hell, and I loved every minute of it because I love you.”
A tear breaks free, sliding down her cheek, and I brush it away before bending to kiss the corner of her mouth. “I’ve loved you far too hard for far too long to let you run from me now.” Her lips tremble against mine, and I kiss her harder. “It would have killed me to bring you back to him,” I whisper.
Her arms tighten around me. “I was never going back.”
“Why did you say yes to him?” I don’t tell her how devastated I was to receive the wedding invitation in the mail. I don’t need to.
Annie buries her face in my neck. “Because you said kissing me was a mistake. I thought maybe if I married Marc, I could finally get over you and move on with my life. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you loved him. Even when the wedding was off, I wanted you to have the choice to go back if that was what you wanted. You deserve to be happy and loved.”
“So do you.” She lifts her head to give me a wide, happy smile. “Am I back on the team?” she asks coyly.
“I can’t do this without you,” I confess, brushing my lips over hers. “Chase with me, Annie. Forever.”
“I don’t want to be anywhere else,” she says softly.
We stand there, kissing by the side of the road, until the sun disappears behind the dark clouds billowing overhead, and the rumbling thunder becomes impossible to ignore.
“Should we go get some storms?” I ask.
Annie laughs and slips her hand into mine, pulling me toward the SUV. “Let’s go.”