Chapter 19 #2
“You said you didn’t want to return here because you felt suffocated. Did I make you feel that way?”
“It wasn’t you. Not exactly. It was the expectations. Everyone around us would always make comments about how we’d end up married with little rancher babies, and deep down I longed to see the world. To experience life outside of this small town. It wasn’t anything you did,” I explained.
This time I didn’t stop myself from putting my hand on his jean clad thigh to offer a reassuring touch. The muscles beneath my touch tensed and relaxed.
After a beat, his hand covered mine. I looked into his baby blue eyes; a sense of longing passed in each of our expressions as we just stared at each under the starlit night sky.
“I,” we both said at the same time, and I let out a laugh.
“You go,” I told him.
His hand tightened atop of mine, and I tried and failed to ignore what his touch did to me.
The calloused hands that I used to hold so dear as we ran through the fields of this ranch, and the ones I used to hold as we drove the backroads.
The same hands that I used to hold in the bed of his truck as we looked up at the sky just like the one that was above us tonight.
Memories flashed in my mind of a younger version of us so rapidly that I didn’t have time to process one before another one came.
Minutes passed as the memories assaulted my mind.
Over the years, I only allowed my mind to drift back to the simpler times Leo and I shared when I was alone in my room.
As more time passed, and Luke got older, it got harder and harder to only see Leo when I was alone because he looked more like his father as he aged.
I blinked rapidly to try and clear the images of our past from my mind as I waited for Leo to respond.
“After you left, I hated what you did to me. I wanted to go after you. I almost did, but I didn’t even know where to start lookin’,” he started.
If he thought hard enough, he’d have figured it out.
I ended up in one of the places that I shared with him.
Maybe in hopes that he’d find me someday, but I never allowed myself to think too hard about it.
“I got so tired of everyone askin’ me how I was, that I barred them from ever speakin’ your name,” he continued.
Hearing those words stung, but I remained silent because I didn’t know what to say.
“I just couldn’t handle the constant worried looks or the questions. I started to act like my old self. I acted like this carefree person but on the inside I was just broken,” he whispered as he looked away from me.
My heart broke for the boy I’d left behind all those years ago, and for the man in front of me today. The what could have been played heavy on my emotions as tears filled my eyes.
This conversation was hard to hear, but every time he was around, it sat heavy between us. Words that needed to be spoken, but neither of us wanted to broach the subject.
“Leo,” I softly said in a broken voice. I turned my hand in his hold, my palm upright, his open hand on top of mine.
I moved first and linked my fingers between his.
He held his hand open as he looked down at my hand in his before he let out a shaky breath and closed his fingers, linking our hands together.
The calloused tips of his fingers moved over the top of my hand and stopped.
“I’m not proud of the person I became, but I couldn’t stop it.
The persona I’d exuded, this playboy without a care in the world, everyone around me accepted it, laughed and joked about it even, and I just didn’t know how to stop it once it started.
What people assumed happened between me and those girls …
while some of it was true, most of it wasn’t.
Especially in the beginning. No matter how hard I tried, they weren’t you, and that was the problem.
After a while, it became easier, and I didn’t fight it.
I just did what everyone now expected of me in the light of day, but I wasn’t that person in the confines of my room.
That person I hid from the world,” he said as he leaned forward, his gaze dropping to our hands.
The tears that he shed hit our hands and slid between us. I tightened my hold as his tears dampened my skin, causing my heart to break even more. Leo had been a boy who exuded confidence, he knew what he wanted out of life, and I turned him into this broken man.
“Who did you hide from the world, Leo?” I asked with a shaky voice as I tried and failed to hide how his confession affected me.
Slowly, he lifted his head and looked at me, his cheeks wet from tears.
“A man who didn’t know how to get over the loss of you,” he admitted, causing the rest of my heart to shatter.
My lips trembled as I let out a sob. I unlinked our hands and brought mine to his face. I used my thumbs to wipe his tears away.
I held his face in the palm of my hands, and my eyes searched his broken ones not knowing where we’d go from here.
“Firefly,” he whispered as he leaned forward and rested his forehead against mine.
The sound of my old nickname coming from his broken voice caused me to sob harder, but I refused to drop the hold I had on his handsome face, needing that connection. The moment hung between the two of us longer than I expected.
We sat on that couch way too close for people who were no longer together, for people who were only coparents to Luke.
We sat close enough for me to notice the subtle things that I’d long since forgotten.
The way his breath caught before he spoke.
The way he always looked away and then back to me before he brought up something he was nervous to discuss.
My eyes looked down at his lips and back to his eyes, like a habit I’d never forgotten.
Our history sat between us, thick and so much still unspoken—the late-night conversations in the bed of his truck, the confessions at the very tree where I broke his heart—the silence became almost unbearable as we stared at each other.
Our eyes searched each other’s as we sat there in silence. We both blinked and our eyelashes brushed against each other’s; we both took in a deep breath, as the butterfly kiss passed between us.
He turned his head to the side, and I sucked in a breath.
“Maybe we shouldn’t,” I started, but the sentence didn’t survive.
The truth lay there in the silence—in the hesitation.
The kiss didn’t begin confidently.
Leo’s tearstained lips brushed across mine, tentative, almost questioning—asking permission from me, from our past, from himself—the touch so soft it barely registered.
He pulled back slightly. His eyes searched mine, my heart hammered in my chest, and a tremble passed through me.
He brought his hands up and covered mine, linking his fingers between mine, as he leaned in and his lips brushed mine again.
Once.
Twice.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t think.
I sat there unmoving.
He gave me a split second to pull away and pretend it didn’t happen. When I didn’t move, he leaned in again.
The third time his lips brushed mine, they didn’t pull away, breaking me out of my haze, I moved my lips against his.
I tasted the salt of his tears as our lips moved.
My grip tightened on his face as I pulled him further into me.
He deepened the kiss, and a groan escaped his mouth as I felt the tip of his tongue trace the outline of my lips.
His kiss was familiar in a disorienting way—like we were slipping back into the place we both called home, making me realize just how much I'd missed him. How much I’d missed us.
The warmth of his lips on mine filled me with an ache because every second of this kiss reminded me why I’d broke us in the first place.
I exhaled shakily against his lips as I pulled back, my forehead hovered close, both of our breaths uneven, not wanting to create distance again but knowing I needed to.
The real weight of our kiss settled in—not just what it was, but all the emotions that returned because of it.
“We probably shouldn’t,” I whispered to him, hating that I needed to put the distance between us yet again. My mind was so jumbled. Thoughts of us mixed with the threatening text from earlier.
He’ll never have you.
The instant the words returned to the forefront of my mind, regardless of how much I didn’t want to, I knew I needed to pull back from Leo, to halt whatever had just passed between us.
I couldn’t let anything happen to him. I had to pull back to protect him from me yet again.
“I know,” he said in a broken whisper. He pulled back, and instantly I regretted pushing him away, but I did nothing to pull him back to me.
It broke my heart to do it, but maybe, just maybe, whenever this was all over, I’d have the chance to fix the brokenness I’d caused.