off from the chain. I grabbed both and jammed them into my pocket.
Even her gift hadn’t made it through our little war.
Twelve
I couldn’t even look at him as he pulled off at my exit. My heart was heavy and icy all at the same time. Like I’d lost something profound.
Maybe I had.
He’d offered me everything in a single moment. Two years ago, I would have leaped at that chance. I would have been wrong. It nearly killed me to realize it. If he’d offered to give up the road for me that rainy day two years ago, I’d have said yes.
I could still taste his rain-soaked kiss. My dimly lit hallway in my shitty little apartment. No roommate, no help—just me and my tiny seven-hundred-square-foot place. I’d spent a million evenings on the saggy couch with Myles.
Back then, we’d wait for our Netflix DVD to come in. Once a week, we’d make sure we spent the night together, no matter what was going on in our lives. My two jobs and night school to get my master’s. His endless rehearsals and studio time. Wednesday nights were for us.
The nights together had been getting even more bittersweet because Myles’s band had finally started to take off. Their first major tour was coming up. No more Wednesdays, no more impromptu songs in my living room, and no more smoky chocolate scent filling my house.
But that night—the last night we’d spent together—everything changed when we said goodnight. I’d picked our favorite movie to say goodbye. (To this day, I still couldn’t watch The Transporter.) We ate too much, laughed too hard, and touched too much. It started innocently. Lingering fingers in a popcorn bowl. Chilly toes stuffed under his always-warm denim-clad legs. Sharing a blanket, then a hug at the door.
Then he’d cupped my face, much like he’d just done on the grass in front of the palatial fucking house that didn’t fit him or us, and he’d kissed me in the doorway.
With rain dampening his hair and jacket. Wetting our faces and fingers as we clutched each other in the doorway of my apartment.
The wild wonder of him finally touching me. Kissing me like he was drowning and I was the last island in a hundred-mile radius. Then he just backed away. Wrecked and horrified, he stumbled away from me.
“I can’t do this.” The only words he said to me before he backed out of my life and disappeared. Then there was the song that bore my name.
And now…what? I couldn’t even comprehend all that had gone on in the space of twenty-four hours.
I shut my eyes as the familiar streets around my childhood home came into view. As his truck stopped at the curb.
I couldn’t look at him and keep this resolve.
He leaned over and unhooked my belt, then dragged me across the middle console. The kiss was wild and harsh. None of the softness from earlier.
It was fraught with anger, sadness, and maybe a bite of desperation. I kissed him back because it might just be the last time. There was a logjam of words stuck in my throat. Kissing him was my only remaining option.
It was the only thing that made sense, even as tears burned behind my eyelids.
I struggled out of his hold. If I didn’t, I’d never leave him. As it was, it hurt too much to even break the kiss.
“Fee, please.”
“Music is a huge part of you. Leaving the band is one thing, but what else are you putting on a shelf? Your dreams, because you don’t think you can have them and me too?”
His eyebrows snapped down. “That’s not it.”
It seemed so clear now. He’d left me in the dark while he’d chased his dreams, leaving me behind in this damn town.
I didn’t know I’d been chasing that light for years now. His light. And now he was trying to snuff it out all on his own.
I stroked his beard one last time. “Goodbye, Myles.” I pushed open the door and hopped out, running for the house before I did something stupid like turn back to him. Run back into his arms and tell him I changed my mind.
I couldn’t stay in this town. Not any longer. Not even for him.
When I glanced back, Myles stood on the sidewalk outside my sister’s house, shattered eyes and grief etching his features.
It took everything inside me to close the door.
“Felicity, have you seen—” My sister put down her purse. “Are you all right?”
I shook my head, my