“Why? It’s the truth. Every path I ever walked… every dream I ever had… they all disappeared that day.”
I can hear it in his words — raw anguish. Unadulterated loss, untempered by time’s passing. He has not yet begun to heal from the damage inflicted last summer. His body may be functioning, but there are deep scars etched across his soul. The kind I’m not sure ever truly disappear.
I wish I could reach into his ribcage and take some of that pain off his heart. But I know I can’t. This is something he has to work through on his own. And even if he’d allow me to be there for him — to support him, like I used to, back when he still needed his best friend — I’m not sure it’s my place. Not anymore. I’m not sure where we stand. He’s dropped so many truths at my feet in the past few minutes, I haven’t yet begun to process how I feel about any of it, let alone what it means for our relationship.
Are we still enemies?
Are we back to being friends?
Or… are we something else entirely?
Thinking too hard about any of it makes my head ache. I push aside the past, the future… everything but the present. Moving forward in small degrees. One minute at a time. One truth at a time.
“You say your plans disappeared, Archer? Then I guess you need to find some new ones,” I tell him with as much gentleness as I can manage. “Because living like this, in the absence of hope… it’s not living.”
His head is shaking, rejecting my words before they’re fully out of my mouth. “You couldn’t possibly understand, Jo. You’ve never lost a thing in your whole damn life. I lost everything. I lost my dream.”
“And I lost mine!” I snap back, the words rushing out before I can stop them. “You lost baseball? I lost you. I lost us.” A tear streaks down my cheek and I brush it away angrily with the sleeve of my sweater.
His face pales, going ashen white against a radiant backdrop of red-pink sky.
I shove to my feet, unable to look at him as I continue. “You say I couldn’t possibly understand? That I’ve never lost anything? Of all the cruel things you’ve ever said to me, Archer Reyes — and there have been many — that’s the cruelest by a mile.”
He gets to his feet, following me down the dock. Matching me stride for stride. I feel a hand curl around my bicep, wrenching me to a stop. Whipping me around to face him.
The look he’s giving me — passion, pure and palpable — makes my knees quake, but I infuse my limbs with iron and anger, refusing to crumble before him like a paper doll for a second time. I do not cave to the urge to fall into his chest. Instead, I dig in my heels, glaring up with every ounce of fury I can muster.
“I was in love with you,” I tell him, point blank. A bullet at close range, straight to the heart. He rocks back on impact. I keep going. “For years. I was so in love with you I couldn’t see anything else. Anyone else. And maybe it wasn’t the same for you, maybe you couldn’t love me back in the way I wanted you to, but you were the most important thing in my life. And when you pushed me away, you broke my goddamn heart. Because I didn’t just lose the boy I loved. I lost my best friend. I lost the person who meant more to me than anything in this world.”
We’re both breathing hard. I’m stunned I’ve just said all that, but once I started there was no stopping it. Everything spilled out in a torrent. Part of me aches to take it all back, to somehow snatch my words from the air and shove them inside, deep down, where he can’t hear them anymore. But another part of me is relieved I can finally take a clear breath for the first time in a year without my heart lodged in my throat.
Archer lurches forward and I swear, in that instant, he’s about to pull me into his arms and crush me against his chest. I backpedal away as his hands graze my shoulders, knowing if he touches me, all my resolve will evaporate like steam.
“Jo, just wait—”
“No! I’m done waiting for you. I’ve waited my whole life for you, and it’s gotten me nowhere.”
“That’s not fair. There are things you still don’t understand—”
“Oh, I understand. I understand completely. Trust me.” I laugh, but the sound is agonized. “But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You don’t trust me. You never have. Not like I trusted you. Not enough to tell me the truth about what was going on last summer.”
“God dammit, Jo, come back here!” he calls after me as I turn and start walking away from him again. “You don’t get to just say you love me and then— Dammit! Would you just stop for a second, you infuriating girl—”
I don’t stop.
I’ve reached my emotional limit for the day.
I hear a deep masculine growl of frustration. The sound of his footsteps stop. I think he’s given up pursuit until his voice slams into my back like a sledgehammer.
“You were my dream, too.”
I stop short. The breath freezes in my lungs. Goosebumps break out across my skin, skittering from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet.
I don’t turn to face him.
I stand stock-still, listening as he closes the steps between us. He comes up behind me, pressing his chest against my back. Absorbing my trembles with the broad frame of his body. His chin comes down to rest on my shoulder. I feel the heat of his breath against my ear. I gasp as the hard evidence of his desire grazes my ass through the thin denim of my cut-off shorts.
I want nothing more than to lean back into his touch, to melt beneath the sensation of his body pressing deliciously against mine.
But I need one more truth from him first.
One last truth.
The only truth that really matters.
“You lied about the rest of that letter, too,” I breathe, eyes pressed tight closed to shut out the world around us. Dulling my senses to everything outside the circle of his arms. “When you said you didn’t feel the same. When you said sleeping together didn’t mean anything. When you said we should just go back to being friends.” I pause. Inhale. Exhale. “True or false?”
His mouth moves against the shell of my ear.
But it’s not his voice I hear.
Not his answer I receive.
“Josephine? Darlin,’ is that you?”
My eyes fly open.
To my utter disbelief, Oliver is walking down the stone steps beside the boathouse. His eyes are wary, full of questions, as he steps onto the dock. His blond hair catches the day’s last rays of sun as he approaches. The lenses of his wire-framed glasses refract like dusky pink headlights.
I jerk like I’ve been sucker-punched. Archer’s arms fall away from me so fast, you’d think my skin had scalded him. We spring apart, two magnets with opposing charges.
“Ollie! What on earth are you doing here?” I practically run to him, desperate to create a bit of space between me and the man standing behind me.
Ollie leans down to press a quick kiss against my lips. I try not to flinch away, hyper-aware of Archer’s intent gaze.
“I came to check on you, of course,” Oliver says, like it should’ve been obvious. “I was worried. You sounded out of sorts on the phone after your boat went down.”
“I told you I was fine!”