THE WIND LIFTED her hair while she stared out at the water from The Arbutus patio. I reached out and brushed her arm.
“You okay, bookworm?”
She turned to me and nodded. “I think so.”
Her tofu bowl sat in front of her, getting cold. “You barely touched your food.”
“I’ll eat it later.”
My heart clenched and I swallowed through a thick throat. Adrenaline still rattled in my veins from what had happened in the bookstore. He didn’t see her. He didn’t see what she had done, what she had fought against, how brave and strong she was.
But she held her ground. She stood tall and called him out.
“I’m so proud of you,” I told her again.
She flicked a quick smile at me. It didn’t reach her eyes. She sighed before she put her elbows on the table and rested her face in her hands. “I think I have to move out.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Yeah?”
She lifted her head and nodded. “Yeah. It’s weird to leave my dad but it’s time. I can’t live there forever.”
It was my opening. I had wanted to ask her all week and here it was, the perfect opportunity. My pulse picked up and I inhaled a deep breath.
“Come with me.” I rested my gaze on her pretty face. I let myself get sucked into the brilliant blue-green of her eyes.
She frowned. “What?”
“Come with me,” I repeated and reached to take her hand. “Let’s travel the world together. You’ve always wanted to, right? California, Australia, Hawaii, Thailand, there’s a whole world out there that you’ve only read about in books.” My heart squeezed. “I want you to come with me. I want you by my side.”
I stroked the back of her hand while she blinked at me.
“You can run the store remotely now that you have Liya and Casey,” I continued. “You can do the social media from anywhere. Same with ordering and payroll.”
Her lips parted at my words and her eyebrows lifted. My heart rattled up into my throat. Fuck, those eyes. I wanted to look into those eyes every day forever.
I swallowed and squeezed her hand. “I’m not ready for this to be over. Think of all the places we’ll go. Think of what we’ll see. There’s so much more than Queen’s Cove, bookworm.”
The words sat below my vocal cords. Those three words that would change everything. I was always telling her to be brave, and here I was, playing chicken with myself.
I opened my mouth to say it but she pulled her hand from under mine and clasped them in her lap before one of them played with the ends of her hair. A frown grew on her face as she glanced from me to the water to her untouched food, then back up to me. Her throat worked and she shook her head with a wince. “I can’t.”
My heart stopped. “What?”
She blinked in disbelief and shook her head again, flicking her hair around. “I can’t go with you. After all this? The store is making money again. I can’t leave.”
“You can run the store remotely.” Hadn’t she heard me earlier?
“I don’t want to.” She shook her head, stabbing me in the gut. “Wyatt, are you serious? I have to stay at the store. She would have wanted that. I blew up my entire relationship with my dad over the store. I can’t walk away now.” She blinked. “I painted over her mural, Wyatt. I can’t leave the store like it means nothing to me. My dad wants to take the store over again. If I leave, who knows what’ll happen?”
“Are you serious?” I leaned forward and she shifted under the weight of my gaze. “After all this, it’s still not about what you want? You spent your entire life doing what your dad wanted and now it’s time to do what she wanted? She would want you to live your fucking life, Hannah.” I softened my tone, swallowing. “Come on, bookworm.” I whispered the words, pleading. “Be brave with me.”
Her mouth pressed into a line and her nostrils flared. At least she was mad. At least she wasn’t fucking hiding like she used to. The people at the next table glanced over at us, listening, but I didn’t give a shit.
“Tell me you’re ready for this to be over, bookworm.”
Fire flashed in her gaze. “Don’t call me that.”
I jerked my chin at her. I could feel the furious expression on my face. “Go on. Tell me. Tell me you feel nothing.”
She wrenched her eyes closed. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does fucking matter.” My chest strained with pressure. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Max approach with a pitcher of water and do a U-turn when he saw our table.
Her eyebrows drew down. “You teach me to choose myself and now you want me to choose you?”
“I do want you to choose yourself. I want you to choose us.”
She didn’t say a word. She just sat there, petrified. Pain pulsed in my chest and I rubbed a hand over my face. I had jumped, but the safety net wasn’t there, and this was me hitting the ground.
This was it. This was the end, it just didn’t happen in a way I expected. I knew it would happen, though, didn’t I? Because all things ended and the universe was cruel. It gave you one tiny taste of something spectacular before ripping the spoon away from your mouth.
My chest was going to explode with pressure. I stood and my chair scraped the deck with a screech. Hannah’s shoulders hitched. Something flashed behind her eyes.
“You were always going to leave.” Her voice shook. “We knew this. You were my practice guy.”
The waves I surfed on might be dangerous, but they were nothing in comparison to the words Hannah threw at me. Pain wrapped around my heart and suffocated everything else out.
I leaned down on the table to look into her eyes. “After all this time, you’re still afraid.”
Her shoulders curled forward and my stomach pitched. My hands itched to pull her into my chest where she belonged, but we couldn’t. We couldn’t go back, like she said.
“Bye, Hannah. It was fun while it lasted.”
I walked out of the restaurant, my heart still at the table with the girl I loved.
