Meaning she must feel comfortable in the shadows, so he took a chance and scooted closer, slipping his hand from hers to draw her against him with an arm around her shoulder. “I wish it hadn’t been that way for you.”
Though she didn’t pull back, her body refused to relax against his. Stifling his frustration, he toyed with the ends of her feathery hair, twisting a piece around his finger then letting the curl spring away before doing it again with another lock. Finally, she broke the silence between them. “Look. I really, really, really don’t want to date you, see you, whatever you want to call it, before I go to France.”
Three reallys, but he continued playing with her hair. God, she was killing him. “Why?”
Another beat of reluctant, weighty silence. Then she finally said, “I don’t want goodbye to hurt.”
Now, Baxter thought, relieved. Now they were getting somewhere. He turned his head and placed a kiss on her temple. “Addy.”
Her face turned toward him and then the kiss was lip-to-lip, sweet. He thought he tasted a yearning inside her. It couldn’t be all on his side. He touched his tongue to the seam of her mouth and she opened, her own tongue brushing his. With a little moan, she broke away.
“Baxter, no.” Her voice sounded strained. “I told you, I don’t want goodbye to hurt.”
He captured her hand again. “Won’t it already?”
“No,” she said, pulling free again and swinging around on the cushions in order to face him. “Because I’m still certain, here—” she thumped her fist on her chest “—that I don’t get to have you.”
“Wha—”
“An Addy March doesn’t get a Baxter Smith.”
He stared at her, trying to decipher the puzzle of her words. This close, even without any light, he could see she was serious. Determined. Near furious.
“Honey, I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”
She huffed out an impatient, irritated breath. “How many ways do I have to say this?” she asked, lifting her arms. “Here’s how it is— You’re the golden guy. I’m the plain fat girl.”
His brain couldn’t keep up. What? What, what, what? She could fit in a thimble. “I’m having trouble here.”
Her feet thumped on the hardwood as she jumped up. “You don’t remember me as a kid.”
“Uh...” Not really. He remembered her as a concept—until That Night. As a kid he’d known the couple down the road had a girl, younger than himself and his cousins. Just with that, she had been dismissed from his consciousness. “Maybe I saw you passing in a car, or...?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She was pacing. “I told you, I developed ways to deal with the ugly atmosphere at my house. Stories in every form. Pretend. Food. I’ve burned every picture of myself between the ages of eight and nineteen.”
Oh, Addy.
“Home was hell. School was hell. Then, for a high school graduation present my dad offered me a summer at fat camp.”
Baxter couldn’t think of one thing to say. But his heart was giving him grief, squeezing so hard that it seemed to constrict the beat. “That...that couldn’t have been the gift you wanted.”
“Are you kidding?” She rounded on him. “It was a great gift.”
He should keep his mouth shut. He really, really, really should. “Okay.”
“I had a chance to get away from my toxic household. I had a chance to think about me and what I wanted. I deferred college a year—I told you that—and I found new ways to cope. I learned some healthier habits.”
“That’s good.”
“Damn good.”
“Damn good,” he echoed. “But why can’t we—”
“Because when I see myself in the mirror, more than half the time I don’t see this me.” She faced him, and even in the dark he could see her vibrating with emotion. “Instead, I see the old, miserable me, unhealthy, unhappy, and I’m just a breath away from hiding from my reflection in those former habits.”
“Honey—”
“I can’t do it.” Her voice sounded tense. “I can’t spend more time with you and then leave the country. It’s bad enough that I might come to...miss you, but to be emotionally brittle and living in the land of croissants and chocolate?”
“Addy...”
She shook her head. “I just can’t do it.”
It still sounded as if she liked him, though. Baxter couldn’t dismiss that. He didn’t want to dismiss that—he cared too much. Rising off the couch, he approached her. She didn’t try to evade him, even when he curled his fingers around her upper arms. “It doesn’t have to be disaster. The way I