my breath away.
I love her. I never stopped.
My body reacts and wants to be close to her, wants to feel her pressed up against me. I ache for her. Every little piece of me. All we can do is stare. She licks her lips, and I stare.
“Seth?”
I nod, my body shaking. There’s so much to talk about but words don’t come. We both stand and stare, drinking each other in. A hunger is in her eyes that I haven’t seen for a long time. Loose hair catches on her mouth and she doesn’t move to tuck it behind her ears. Then all of a sudden a sob escapes her and she’s running to me.
It only takes me a couple seconds to react and I’m running toward her. We crash in the middle. She jumps up and wraps her legs around me. Then she’s kissing me. She crushes her lips against mine and kisses me like there’s no tomorrow. She slides down until her feet land on the ground. Her fingers dig into my hair and then she’s holding me against her like she never wants me to leave.
We stagger back, losing our balance, but not wanting to let go of each other. And I can’t pull my mouth away from hers. I didn’t expect this and I’m scared to know why. Is this goodbye? Through the haze of desire I remember why I’m here. For truth. I break our kiss and see the hurt in her eyes.
“I have to talk to you,” I gasp out.
I’m so embarrassed. I attacked the guy without any warning. And now he’s backing off from me. I overstepped. What was I thinking? I wasn’t. I just acted. Then I remember the news.
“Oh my God, I have to talk to you.” I’m breathless from our kiss, and all I want to do is kiss him again, but he has to know.
He steps closer and grabs my hand, but I talk first. “You’re not at fault. I know you think you are and you ran and you blamed yourself this whole time but it’s not true, not any of it.”
He tilts his head, a smile tugging at his lips.
My words tumble out. “Someone confessed.”
He grabs the back of my head and pulls me back into a kiss. I try and tell him that it wasn’t him, that they arrested the guy, but my words come out garbled. I push him away.
“It wasn’t you.”
His face breaks out in a smile. “I know.”
“How?”
“I turned myself in at the police station. They told me.” He pulls a fine out of his back pocket. “I just got a fine for hitting a parked police car, even though there’s no real proof it was me. I confessed and they accepted.” He pulls me toward the edge of the bluff. “I stayed to tell you the truth. I didn’t want you feeling guilty.”
Then it’s as if he remembers the entire last year and pulls away from me. Immediately I miss his warmth. It hits me that this is goodbye. He’s still leaving.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have attacked you like that.”
“I didn’t mind so much.” Seth smiles and his eyes are on my lips.
We turn and stare out at the ocean. I clasp my hands together to keep them from fiddling. Before he leaves I’m going to tell him everything I wanted to last year. “I’m sorry I spent more time with my friends and not enough time with you. I wasn’t trying to lead you on or play with your head.”
“Haley, it’s okay.”
“No. I need to tell you. I joked so much because I was afraid you didn’t want to be serious. Graduation came and I thought about our future and I was afraid that in the fall you’d lose interest. That we were just some high school romance. I didn’t know how to read you.”
He shakes his head. “With everything going on with my parents, I was afraid. I didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t think you wanted more. I guess we should’ve talked a lot more than we did. About us. About the future.”
“Yeah.”
An awkward silence engulfs us. I don’t know what he’s thinking. He plays with a tuft of grass, deep in thought.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, “if it’s too late for us.” It breaks my heart into little pieces to say these words but if he needs to start fresh somewhere then I need to let him go.
He looks at me, his eyes soft and gentle.