Chapter Twenty-Eight #3
A flicker lit in her eyes, and for half a second, he dared to imagine she was feeling all the same complicated emotions that he was.
Maybe she was, but fundamentally, they were at different junctures in their lives.
“But you talk about your life here like it’s some phase. A ‘change of scenery,’” he spat out. “Heart’s Hope Crossing is my home.”
Brows furrowing, she edged toward him. “It’s my home, too.”
“You’ve been here for all of about five minutes, though.”
“And yet I feel more at home here than I did for the past seven years.”
He shook his head. “You said earlier today that you miss New York.”
“I miss some things about it. Mostly public transportation and dim sum.” She reached out, touching his hand, sending electricity zipping through him, but it didn’t soothe the growing ache inside his chest. “But the people I’ve met here… you…”
“But you said it yourself.” His throat was raw. “You just sort of ended up here by accident. I don’t want Heart’s Hope Crossing to be yet another thing you ended up floating along into without meaning to.”
“It’s not.” She tried to entwine their hands, but their fingertips slipped past each other. “I mean, it was. I guess. But that was ages ago.”
It had been barely a month.
“Everything’s changed since then,” she said quietly.
Only that was the problem.
“And what if they change again? How can you be so sure you’re not just passing through?”
Realization dawned in her eyes. “Is that what this is about? Just—you think I’ll, what? Wake up tomorrow, decide this place isn’t for me, and leave?”
“Well, when you put it that way…” It sounded ridiculous, but the very idea of it punched a hole in his heart.
“I wouldn’t do that. Not to Granny and not—” Her throat bobbed. “Not to you.” She caught his hand in hers again, more firmly this time. “Don’t you know that?”
And they were in dangerous territory here. Too dangerous. The feeling of walls closing in around him again compressed his lungs; he couldn’t breathe.
“I know I ended up here by accident,” she admitted. A soft, tentative smile curled her lips. “But maybe all of that happened for a reason. Maybe it’s fate—”
He dropped her hand like she had burned him. She was giving him everything he could have possibly wanted, and in this moment, it was completely, totally wrong. “I don’t believe in fate.”
He believed in what happened after happily-ever-after. He believed in hospital beds and loss, and the dead look in his father’s eyes—the one that hadn’t receded in a goddamn decade. The one that probably never would.
He believed in the fact that—unlikely as it was—if she woke up tomorrow and decided she was just passing through…
It would break him.
“Bullshit,” she said.
His head snapped up. Pride flared inside him, right along with a healthy dose of annoyance. Once upon a time, she probably would have demurred or put on a bright smile if someone had talked to her like that. But not anymore.
Now fires burned in her eyes as she stared him down. “If you didn’t believe in fate, you wouldn’t have spent your whole life running away from people.”
“Hey—”
“Tell me it isn’t true.” She threw her hands out to the side. “Tell me you haven’t spent years keeping everyone out, just so they can’t hurt you.”
There was that bruise again, and she wasn’t just pressing on it. She was digging a goddamn nail right on through.
Well, if that was how she wanted to play this, then fine. “People leave. People die.”
“So then what’s even the point of living?”
Honestly? Hell if he knew. That was a question for philosophers and poets, not self-sabotaging forest rangers who never should have left the safety of the woods.
At his silence, her mouth quivered. Angry dampness gathered at the corners of her eyes. “It’s not that you don’t believe in fate. It’s that you don’t believe in us. And you don’t believe in me.”
“That’s not true.” He believed in her more than he believed in just about anyone.
And yet…
“I want this.” She gestured at him. “I want to be with you. I want to live in this ridiculous, wonderful town. I like who I am here.”
Nothing she was saying was funny. The laugh that bubbled out of him was humorless, too.
And when he spoke again, it was just plain sad. “But how can ‘who you are’ change on a dime like that?” Desperation was sandpaper scraping the back of his throat. “Do you even know who you are? What you want?”
When they’d first met, she was a chameleon, always hiding how she really felt. Putting on a brave face and making the best of every situation. He loved that she’d gotten bolder, but how was he supposed to trust that she wasn’t just telling him what he wanted to hear?
“Heart’s Hope Crossing can’t just be another thing you go along with,” he told her, his voice cracking. His throat caught, but he pushed through. “I can’t.”
She blinked furiously yet again, her hands curling into fists at her sides.
“How can you ask me that? If you think I’ve just been ‘going along’ with this… with us?” The fire in her eyes flashed black. “Then the problem isn’t that I don’t know who I am. It’s that you don’t know me. At all.”