Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
“Why do you have to leave in a few weeks? Why can’t you stay here?”
“I already told you why I moved to Houston in the first place. There’s no reason for me to still be here.”
His throat bobbed again. “I want you here, kiddo. Is that a good enough reason? I like havin’ you here. You think your sister or Boog like havin’ you around more than me? ’Cause they don’t. I’m sure they don’t.”
I held my breath as my nose burned. There was no getting out of this. I knew there wasn’t. I had done this. It was my fault. “Oh, Zac, please don’t make me do this. I told you I’ll come back. We’ll always be friends. I’ll see you as much as I can, as much as you have time for, even if we live in different places.”
“I wanna know why you won’t stay,” he said, like the stubborn ass he was, and I knew I wasn’t going to get out of this.
He wanted it. The truth. And he wasn’t going to fucking let it go.
“I don’t want to,” I told him honestly, clenching my fist closed afterward when I felt that it was shaking a little. I had to lift my hand and brush the knuckle under my eye when it started to tickle, and I was more surprised to see it come back wet.
His frown got even bigger. “If it’s makin’ you tear up, I wanna know even more, darlin’.”
“I don’t want to lose you.”
“Lose me?” He looked stunned. “Now you’re assumin’ you’re gonna lose me? What the hell is goin’ on? We go from me askin’ you to lunch to you bein’ all closed off and then sayin’ you wanna move somewhere else even though I’m standin’ here tellin’ you to stay with me, and now you’re implyin’ you’re gonna lose me? What the hell happened? What am I missin’?”
How the hell had this gotten so out of control? I wanted to cry. I wanted to bury my head in the sand and pretend like none of this was happening, but that wasn’t going to be reality. “Look, I’m feeling overwhelmed, and I don’t mean to take it out on you. I just think it would be for the best, and I’m not going to change my mind.”
“Why?” he asked, his voice rough then. “You said you liked Houston. You said you like bein’ around me.”
“Oh my God, can you please just drop this? Can you please just say, ‘I totally understand, Peewee. I want you to do whatever will make you happy….’”
“I want you to be happy, kiddo,” he said with a tremendous frown that was eating me up by the second. “But I don’t get why that can’t be here.”
He was going to kill me. “Because you don’t need me here.”
“Who the hell said that?”
I was seconds away from crying. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes. I do,” he insisted. “You were snugglin’ on the couch with me the other day, and now you don’t even want to be in the same city.”
Lifting my hand, I rubbed my forehead, taking in his perplexed face. His confused eyes. And I had no idea what to do with them. “If you want someone to snuggle with, you’ve got a thousand girls in your contact list who would love to do it, Zac. If you want a best friend, you don’t need me here. You’ve done that with Boogie for the last fifteen years. If I live somewhere else, we’re not losing each other. I love you, and I know you love me too.”
His shoulders dropped, and something enormous moved over his face at the mention of Boogie. Something like exasperation or defeat. Or something I couldn’t understand. His gaze went to the ceiling, and he squeezed his eyes closed as he said, in a rough voice, “Of course I love you, kiddo.”
I was going to have to tell him. There was no way around it. Fear rose up in my chest, swift and steady, but he was never going to understand otherwise. And I was going to have to believe that we could get through just about anything together.
Including me and my dumbass feelings.
“That’s the problem, Zac. I know you do. I know that. But, I… I love you differently than that. In a way that isn’t… friendly. In a way that I have no business, okay? And I know that,” I told him softly. “Please don’t make me talk about this anymore. I lost you for ten years, and I don’t want to lose you for another ten again because I made things weird. You were Boogie’s first… and I get it. You and I were just meant to be friends. Best friends.”
All I could hear was his soft breathing in the moments after that.
He was watching me with this devastated expression that cracked me in half.