Second Chance Summer (Chance #1)(57)
Author: Emma Hart

“Damn it. Don’t cry, baby. Please don’t cry.” Reese tightens his grip on me, leaning back against my car. I let my body sag into him and hold onto him like my life depends on it.

“I wish you were coming.”

“Soon. I promise.” He pulls back, lifting my head, and cups my cheeks with his hands. His sad, yet earnest, eyes bore into mine, shining with the love I know is mirrored in mine. His thumbs swipe softly below my eyes, wiping away the tears falling from them. “I promise, Kia. I’m gonna do my damn best to get my ass up to New York before you even realize we’ve been apart. I’ll be there before you’ve even had a chance to miss me.”

I shake my head. “Not possible. I’ll be a mess of blubbering, hopelessly in love teenage girl by the morning.”

“By the morning? I’m offended,” he teases. “I’ll probably collapse right here the second you drive away.”

Despite the truth in his words, I crack a small smile and press our faces together. “Try not to destroy my pathetic excuse of a yard, okay?”

“I’ll try,” he mutters against my lips.

The moment looms on us, and I can feel it settling. I know we have to say goodbye. We could stand here all day, making promises to each other if we really wanted, but it wouldn’t change anything. Standing here is only delaying what has to happen, and that’s not good for either of us.

The longer you leave things, the harder they are to do. Avoiding the things you don’t want to do never gets anyone anywhere.

“You have to go now, don’t you?”

I nod, fresh tears spilling from my eyes, and sniff a little. “Yeah. I’ll miss my flight if I don’t go now.”

Reese sighs heavily. “I swear to God, Kia, the second you leave, I’m gonna spend every spare second trying to find a job and place to stay in New York. And I swear to God I won’t stop until I have somewhere. Even if it means I have to live outside the city and work inside it, travelling for hours every day. I’ll do it because I’ll be closer to you.”

“I’ll look, too,” I promise him. “I’ll do everything I can.”

“I know.”

Silence stretches between us as we look into each other’s eyes. My fingers are curled tightly around the collar of his shirt, and his hands are firmly on either side of my head. Neither of us wants to move, because moving means letting go and letting go means leaving.

And leaving means goodbye.

And goodbye means being apart.

Again.

“Okay,” he says firmly. “You need to go or you’ll never make it.”

I nod even though my heart is clenching, tightening, breaking. I nod even though I don’t agree in the slightest.

“I love you,” I whisper, my voice cracking.

“I love you.” His lips press firmly against mine, so firmly not even a breath of air is between them. I kiss him back, giving it everything I have. My knees shake as we part, and he lets me go. I feel the loss of him against me more clearly than I’ve ever felt anything before, and it’s taking everything I have inside of me not to let it show just how much it hurts.

Reese opens my car door, and I get in. I open the window and start up the engine.

“I guess this is goodbye,” I say softly, focusing on my steering wheel. I can’t look at him again. I just can’t.

He leans forward, leaning on the door. “No, baby. No. This isn’t goodbye. Goodbye would suggest we’re never gonna see each other again. Goodbye suggests forever, and this isn’t forever. This isn’t even close to forever. It’s nothing like a goodbye – it’s barely even a see you later. Do you hear me, Kia James?”

I tear my eyes from the wheel to meet his, and he reaches out, moving some hair from my face.

“We will never, ever, ever say goodbye. Only one thing about us is forever, and that’s the fact we’ll be together for it.” He wipes under my eye again.

I breathe in deeply, taking in his woody scent, and touch the pad of my thumb to his mouth. He kisses it gently and places my hand on the wheel. He steps back from the car, folding his arms across his chest.

I put the car into reverse, and after a beat of staring of eyes for the last time, I pull out of the drive.

No words. No goodbyes. Only promises and hopes and dreams.

But even knowing there is a forever doesn’t stop the burning cascade of tears that flood my eyes and blur my vision as I drive away from him. And it definitely doesn’t stop the fear like I thought it would.

If anything, in the time it takes me to drive across town and cross the town line, my fear grows and morphs into something entirely different.

I’m no longer afraid of falling in love with him, or of being in love with him. Instead, what scares me now is the very real possibility that, with him here in Alabama and me thousands of miles away in New York… our forever may never come.

EPILOGUE – Reese

Watching her drive away from me hurts just as much as it did last year when I realized she’d gone. Seeing the tears escape she fought so hard to contain makes my own spill over the edges of my eyes.

Summer is nowhere near over, but she’s gone. She’s gone to the other half of her life I know f**k all about, and that pisses me off almost as much as the fact she’s gonna be living with another guy. The only place I want her to be is right here next to me. The only place she should be is right here in my arms.

No one else is meant to be there. She really is my forever. I’ve lived without her once, and I won’t do it again.

I glance at her house and walk toward my truck. The clock on the dash blinks back at me, and I realize I’ve been standing on her drive for ten minutes. Watching her go over and over again. Ten f**king minutes and it already feels like I’m missing half of me. Like a part of my soul has been ripped away.

My truck roars to life. I grab the gearstick, expecting another hand to be there, but there isn’t. The cab feels empty without her. It feels wrong. I shake off the feelings and tear away from her house.

I promised her I’d get to New York. I promised her I’d be there soon, and I won’t break it. Standing in her drive isn’t gonna find me a job or a place to live – me getting off my ass and tracking down every single paper in New York will do that.

Just like last year, I’m without her. But this year I have more.

I have more because I know without a doubt; Kia James is mine.

And I will do everything in my power to keep it that way.