a new kind of feeling in my heart. It doesn’t squeeze with hurt this time, but pumps with anticipation and nervousness. “Carter…”
He gestures toward my food. “Eat before it gets cold. There’s more here. Rice, vegetables, dumplings. You still like those too, right?”
My lips open, but nothing comes out.
What is happening right now?
“Can I ask you something?” He asks the question with such casualness that I almost forget what he’d just said.
“Uh … sure.”
“It was Danny,” he murmurs, “right? The person you struggled figuring out if you had real feelings for or not.”
My shoulders tighten as I sit back, picking at my food again to stall. “There was never a doubt I had feelings for him. It was him who didn’t have the same kind for me. That’s what always confused me. How could one person fall hopelessly in love with somebody else who doesn’t feel the same? That means everything I believe in is a lie.”
He pauses. “What do you believe in?”
“That true love only exists once,” I whisper in return, not meeting his eyes. I sit in the chair, staring at my food, no longer hungry despite the way my stomach tells me to fill it with every strong scent of greasy food that I breathe in from the selection around me. “That heartbreak can’t hurt me more than once. That things happen for a reason.”
I hear his chair move from his weight leaning forward and feel the burn of his inquisitive eyes roving over my face. “And you don’t believe those things anymore?” His tone is gravelly, low, weaved with interest that my heart pounds harder over.
Wetting my dry lips, I look up. “If any of that were true, I never would have watched Daniel McCray get married to another woman, have a beautiful baby girl, and pass away.”
His throat bobs, but he’s silent.
“So, yeah. Everything I knew was a lie.”
“Piper…”
I shrug, forcing a smile that’s no longer foreign on my face. It’s tight, uncomfortable, but resembling some mask that indicates I’m okay. The way Carter looks at me, studies me with narrowed brown eyes, tells me he knows I’m not.
“There’s more than one person out there for us,” he states with a tip of his head. Settling back in his seat, he smiles in a way that seems genuine, not fake. “There’s somebody for us in every situation, people we need in the moment.”
The more those words soak in, the more hope I have in believing he’s right. Maybe one day I can even claim them to be true. One day I can say I’ve experienced three kinds of love; the one I lost, the one I found, and the one I reconnected with.
I think about Danny.
About Easton.
…and I stare at Carter.
“Is there something going on here?” I ask in an audible tone, observing the food and the conversation that comes a little too easily.
“The truth?”
I nod, listening to my heart pumping to a new beat that doesn’t hurt but keeps me hyperaware of the way his body shifts toward mine. His chair squeaks, his head tilts, and his eyes darken. I take in every part of him.
He says five words.
Five words that change everything.
“I’d like there to be.”
In that moment, I hold my breath.
I let goosebumps pimple my arms.
I let the hurt that’s simmered for so long inside of me loose into the wild so it can’t be contained in the organ drumming within my chest. Instead, I repeat his words in my head.
I’d like there to be.
Those words make all the difference.
Chapter Twenty
The evening spent with Carter ended in a full stomach and permanent smile on my face. Our conversation turned into reminiscing in between paper grading. Jokes were made, we teased each other about the stuff we did growing up, and he chuckled every time my cheeks would turn red when I remembered something embarrassing that I did to try getting his attention.
Jenna was disappointed when I came home at a decent time without so much as a peck on the lips to tell her about even though I told her nothing like that would happen. When we finished grading the assignments, Carter asked if I wanted any leftovers, mentioned grabbing dinner again sometime soon, and smiled before saying goodbye. Nothing was uncomfortable, and the smile on my face, the one still wavering there, is the only reason Jenna didn’t push me.
I’m sitting on the living room floor with Ainsley playing tea party when she begins signing to me about the fake food