“Yes.” Something in his tone makes me ache for him. I’m slow as I walk toward him, as if I’m scared if I make too loud of a noise that he’ll lose his balance and fall. I reach out and touch his arm, the spot right above his elbow, and Sawyer immediately turns toward me, away from the edge. Our eyes lock, my heart reacts and my fingers trail down his hot skin until I can lace hands with him.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Sawyer’s silent for a beat then squeezes my fingers. “When I’m with you, I am.”
His admission warms me from the inside out, which is totally unlike me. But maybe that’s what I like about Sawyer. Being with him causes me to explore unknown things about myself, learning things when I thought I knew it all.
“What made you feel bad?” Sawyer asks.
“Same old, same old. A baby brain tumor that can cause migraines.”
“Yeah, but something in how your dad looked when he talked…” He trails off. I really need Dad to stop talking about me. I sigh heavily, and as if sensing my inner turmoil, Sawyer lightly tugs on my hand and leads me to the blanket.
We sit and he doesn’t let go of me like I expect, but instead he scoots so close that we’re able to rest our joined hands on our outstretched legs. Sawyer’s hands aren’t quite what I expected. They aren’t super rough, not super smooth, but a strong and gentle in-between. While he holds my hand as if I’m fragile crystal, there’s power in his grip. As if even his hands are as precisely muscled as the rest of him.
I skim my finger along the top of his hand and Sawyer sucks in a small breath as if I surprised him, as if he likes my touch. The idea causes a pleasing sensation to course along my veins so I do it again.
“You’re quiet,” I softly say.
“I’m giving you time,” he answers.
“For?”
“To decide whether or not you want to tell me why you were upset.”
“What if I don’t want to tell?”
“Then you don’t, but I’ll be sad if you stop touching my hand.”
I smile, so does he, but then he turns serious. “To be honest, I need to tell you something, too. Something private. And I’m using the time to work up my own courage.”
“There’s nothing you need to tell me,” I whisper.
“Yeah, there is. I don’t want to, but I have to, and there’s no doubt it’ll change how you look at me so I’m okay if you decide to talk first or if you want more time.”
Time. It’s such a weird concept. Three hundred and sixty-five days in a year. Twenty-four hours in a day. Sixty minutes in an hour. Sixty seconds in a minute. Fifteen breaths per minute.
How many breaths do I have remaining? How many more moments will I ever have like this in my life? To be pain-free and alive as I am right now? When will I ever sit on this quarry edge and live this moment again? Never. Probably never.
What do I tell Sawyer? That I was sad because I was once in love with Leo, and I realized that sometime, someway, without conscious thought, that I fell out of love with him?
That for well over a year, if not longer, I’ve known that Leo has been in love with me, but he was never strong enough to love me past my tumor. I convinced myself he was oblivious to my feelings because that was easier than seeing the truth—that the tumor made me unlovable.
Do I tell Sawyer that I finally understood my feelings changed because I now have feelings for him? I can’t tell him that though. How can I start something with him when I’m going to die?
Sawyer knows I have a small tumor, a tiny tumor that causes headaches. Leo saw my mother’s slow and excruciating death. Sawyer has never witnessed my debilitating migraines. Leo’s watched me writhe in pain from a distance as Nazareth has smoked me up to help with the agony. Leo knows my fate. Sawyer doesn’t. He deserves to know, but I want to be selfish, just for tonight. I deserve that. I deserve, if only for this heartbeat, to live.
Tonight, Sawyer looks at me with possibility. Tomorrow, Sawyer can join Leo in viewing me as something that could have been.