Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 121764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
When we made it to the river, I pulled him to the side, sliding my hands up to hook on his shoulders. I waited for him to look down at me, and then I framed his face as best I could for being so much shorter than he was.
“You don’t owe him anything,” I said, holding his gaze and hoping he believed me. “You can love him and still need distance. You can respect him and still withdraw the power he’s had over you. Your dad has helped you — no doubt about it. But this gift?” I said, placing my hand over his heart. “It’s yours and yours alone. Don’t let him steal that from you.”
He sighed, covering my palm, his large fingers lacing over mine.
“How do you know exactly what I need to hear?”
I shrugged, pressing up on my toes to kiss him.
“The same way you can tell when I’m faking a smile, I guess,” I said. “I just know… you.”
One Last Time
Grace
Time was my number one enemy.
I felt like I was free falling, hurdling toward a certain death while I grappled to hold on to anything I could grasp. A tree branch, a rope, a jagged rock — but nothing would catch, and nothing could stop me.
One by one, we checked every item off my list.
Day by day, we explored and laughed and lived like we were the only two people in the world.
And night by night, I fell in love with Jaxson Brittain.
I didn’t even try to fight it. I think a part of me knew it would happen from the moment I jumped into his passenger seat. It was impossible not to fall for him — for his smile, his hands, his drive, his passion, the way he held me, the way he kissed me, the way he listened to me, like he wanted to know everything that made me who I was.
I didn’t just slip into loving him, either. I sky-dived. I flipped off a cliff and swam in the warm waters of loving him like the gift that it was.
I knew we were saying goodbye. I knew it was all coming to an end.
Just like every other relationship I’d ever had, I knew before it even started that it would be over soon.
But for the first time, I found it all worth it.
This summer with him had been worth the pain that would come.
It was almost laughable, how it had all started with him wanting to make me feel better after a stupid boy had broken up with me. That was not a relationship. That was nothing.
The very man who wanted to heal me had only given me something even harder to lose.
It was easy to pretend we had forever that week in Canmore, when every minute of every day was filled. There wasn’t any spare time to think. There wasn’t ever a silent moment to let reality sink in.
Until the night of the thirtieth, when Jaxson and I were packing our bags.
And this time — it wasn’t to get back in the car and set off to the next place together.
My throat was impossibly tight as I rolled a pair of jean shorts, trying and failing to find enough space in my bag for them.
We’d decided to sell our hiking and camping gear at the local outpost so they could in turn sell it used at a good price to someone in the area who might need it. But still, I’d bought so many little things along the way, there just wasn’t enough space.
Which was also very unlike me.
In all my travels, I never bought souvenirs. I was always taking my memories and photos with me and nothing else. But with this…
I’d found myself desperate to find and hold fast to any tangible object I could, to take any and all proof with me that this wasn’t just a fever dream.
That it was real — that we were real.
I had a coaster from the bar in Atlanta, a Chattanooga magnet, my sunglasses and hat from the festival, a golf ball from the tournament, a Wilson State Park t-shirt. There was the coffee mug from Rocky Mountain National Park, a keychain from the car show, a tiny bottle of water I snuck from Mr. Bubbles. And in the last week, I’d purchased something from every stop in Canmore and Banff, desperate to fill this bag with reminders of Jaxson and the place he grew up, of every memory we made here together.
Now, combined with everything I’d already had in my bag before, it was overflowing.
“Did you check in for your flight?”
Jaxson’s voice startled me a bit from where I was lost in thought, and I held my hiking boots in one hand, staring at my bag and trying to figure out where I could shove them. My speaker played softly in the corner of the room, “Almost Lover” by A Fine Frenzy setting the solemn mood.