Chapter 41
“Ibroke up with Colin today.”
Linden decides to drop that line on me in the middle of dinner preparation.
It’s just the two of us since the rest of the Nook is out, either seeking distraction or deliberately giving us space.
Linden, who has joined me in the kitchen, just told me about his parents coming up to Bonham, before switching the topic from one moment to the next, his voice awfully casual during all of it.
I almost slice off the tip of my finger.
The knife slips from my grip and clatters onto the tiles between us. I stare at it for a second, then back at the half-chopped onion on the cutting board in front of me.
“You what?” I say, more to the cutting board than to him.
Linden shrugs, scraping the basil he worked on into a neat little pile before lifting his head to meet my eyes. “I broke up with him,” he repeats, a little slower this time.
Okay, guess I heard that right then. My heart does a small, treacherous jump inside my chest.
“Or…well. Ended whatever that was. We weren’t really together after all,” he relativizes as he reaches over for the unchopped half of my onion, our arms brushing for barely a second. It’s enough to send soft shivers down my spine.
“O…kay?” I crouch to pick my knife back up and wash it in the sink. By the time it’s clean, there’s nothing left to cut, so I dry it instead.
“Okay? Is that all you have to say?” Linden asks after a moment of silence, his knife scraping over the board again, this time to reunite the little onion dices. I watch with laser focus as they topple off his board and back onto mine.
I take a deep breath, subtly wiping my sweaty palms on the kitchen towel. “What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Something?”
I shake my head, letting out a small huff. “Congrats? Sorry? Good for me?”
That at least earns me an exasperated laugh. “Micah.”
“Why did you do it?” I ask as I look for the cooking spray to grease the pan.
I know we should probably sit down for this conversation—it’s not coming out of nowhere; we said that we would need to talk through everything eventually.
It’s just that it felt different a few days ago, in the middle of the night.
“You know why I did it,” he says quietly. His cheeks are going pink, either from the warmth of an end-of-summer evening sneaking past the AC’s work or from my question.
“I need to hear it,” I tell him honestly, not realizing how much that is true until the words have left my mouth. I really need to hear it, not just the ‘I like you a lot' version he gave me a few days ago that had a but tagged right onto it.
Linden takes a deep breath, placing his knife on the counter before facing me head-on, his gray eyes holding mine steadily.
“Well. First of all, it would’ve been dishonest to continue seeing him. To him, obviously, but also to myself,” he says without wavering. Like he’s already thought about this for quite some time and just needed to find the right moment to put it out there.
“Back in high school, when suddenly everyone seemed to have a girlfriend or boyfriend, I comforted myself with the thought that the right person would probably be waiting for me at college. And then, when Nicko and Xander got together…when Nicko talked about moving out…I don’t know; it seemed like everyone was going ahead with their lives—meeting their partner, getting ready for the next step.
I realized my time here would come to an end, and all I had achieved was switching my major without telling my family and taking out extra student loans. ”
I open my mouth to protest at that, but Linden holds up his hand, silencing me quietly before continuing.
“Honestly, I think I panicked about being left over or something. But I also understood that I had to actually take charge and go looking; that no one would come knocking at the wallflower’s door, you know?
So I matched with Colin on an app, and it was like…
well, we got along okay, and I was willing to hold on to that.
So yeah, continuing on that basis would’ve been unfair to both of us. ”
I snort at his explanation, shaking my head lightly. “Getting along okay? You set the bar pretty low, sweetheart.”
“I know.” Linden rakes a hand through his blond hair, his eyes going up to the ceiling for a second before flicking back to me. “I guess I just didn’t know where to set it.”
“Do you know now?” I ask, my pulse jumping when I detect a small smile spreading on his lips.
“I do. Actually, it’s set pretty high at the moment.
Like, if my next boyfriend doesn’t go cherry-picking with me on my parents’ farm, if he doesn’t rescue small kittens and lets them climb in his lap despite his allergy, and if he doesn’t kiss me in the rain against the side of my crappy car, then I don’t want him. ”
And suddenly, my heart is going wild inside my chest. The sound of blood rushing in my ears almost drowns out the last part of Linden’s words.
“Lind—” I croak out, but he isn’t finished yet.
His ears are burning red, the blush spreading from his cheeks to his neck when he presses on.
“I love you, Micah. Somewhere between all of that happening, I fell for you. And I know I said I can’t imagine doing what Olli and Seb did, and I’m fucking terrified, but I still love you, and I don’t think I’ll be able to change that. ”
“I don’t want you to change that,” I rasp out, my hands trembling by my sides, so I quickly flex them to work the tremors out.
My chest is doing something complicated—tightening and loosening at the same time.
I think about huddling under a blanket in the bed of Linden’s truck, stargazing.
I think about how he held me while I told him about my parents, and then I think about kissing him in the rain.
I think about Wagner’s office, too, about ‘not everything out there is worth the cost’, and Seb in the parking lot, saying ‘I thought if I kept those two worlds strictly apart, I could maybe have both’.
“I love you, too,” I say. “I think I’ve been doing that for a while now. You probably knew.”
“I hoped,” he admits, his words accompanied by a breathless laugh, his hands reaching out for me. “But honestly, I didn’t dare assume.”
I step into his open arms, then grab his hips and hop him up onto the counter to lean our foreheads together. “What happened to ‘not doing’ football ogres who plan to go pro?” I want to know, my nose pressing against his cheek, then behind his ear, carefully inhaling his scent.
“Yeah, that was probably more me trying to manage my wishful thinking,” he admits. “But we still have to talk about the ‘going pro’ part.”
I flinch back at that, his words slashing through the small moment of weightlessness he created for us.
“I—” I start, but he puts a finger over my lips, successfully shutting me up.
“I know I can’t ask you to give that up—I would never. And I know it’ll be hard, Micah. You being who knows where you’ll be drafted to, me finishing up here, watching the whole nation fawn over the cute wide receiver,” he says the last part with a small grin, and I choke out a laugh.
“I still play tight end, sweetheart.”
“Glad to know what parts you’re focused on.
” He chuckles before his face goes serious again.
“I won’t lie to you: I don’t like to think of myself as a secret, but I also won’t force you to come out and tank your draft chances.
I know you’re going to work with people who’ll have very strong opinions about who you should be, and those won’t always include me.
I know that and yet I still…I just want us to try, okay? ”
I hold my breath, my eyes searching his for a hint of doubt or hesitation, but there’s none. Just raw honesty as he blinks back at me.
“Lind…that won’t be easy.”
“Probably not,” he agrees.
“We might fight about it. If…if there’s gossip, I mean. We might fight over what people will assume about me. Or if we haven’t seen each other in weeks, and you’re busy with exams, and I’m fighting for my life to get a spot on the roster—we might argue about all of it then.”
“Not unlikely,” he agrees again, his hands reaching for my face, cupping it gently.
“All of that might happen. We’ll need to figure out a lot of rules—no fake girlfriends, for example.
No orchestrated threesomes either. But I don’t want to pass this up because it’ll be hard, and others have failed at it before.
I don’t want to give up just to protect a potentially easier version of my life and settle for the next Linen-Pants-Guy. ”
I snort at that, my hands coming up to his wrists, holding them in place as I lean into his touch.
“I knew he wore linen pants,” I tell him, satisfaction flooding me. “I just knew it.”
“Shut up, ogre.” He laughs and pulls me in, his lips grazing over mine, teasingly at first, then hungrily.
I kiss him back with everything I have to give right now—which, honestly, isn’t much more than the promise of a difficult future.
But it’ll be our future.
And I won’t let it be difficult forever.