Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
He was waiting, staring at me with his beautiful eyes, and I felt like everything could begin or end at this exact moment.
I could barely breathe.
“It’s been two days, Jed,” he rasped, his gaze locked with mine. “I’ve been with you now two days, and the idea of going home and not seeing you except when we’re at work is not— I just—”
“I regret not telling you I love you,” I blurted out, confessing because it was just plain stupid not to. “And not like my partner, but like you’re the person I want to wake up beside for the rest of my life.”
It was quiet, and after a moment I realized he looked utterly gobsmacked.
“I just, I never wanted you to not get everything you wanted in life because you were stuck with me.”
His sigh was long.
“I love you more than anything, and so…it always had to be you before me.”
After the longest moment ever, he said, “I know.”
“You do?”
“Of course I do.”
I looked away and then back. “I love you, and it’s selfish because seriously, Hayden is the perfect guy for you, but I can’t help it, and everything’s been upside down since you told me you were gettin’ married, and only since I woke up in the hospital has everything felt normal again.”
“I feel the exact same way.”
“You do?”
“How could I not? We fit. We’ve always fit.”
And we had. It was like I met him and that was it. He was home. He’d always felt like home.
“When I told you I was going to get married, I thought it would feel right, that I’d feel this weight lift and you’d have no more hold on me, but all I’ve felt since then is a steadily increasing sense of dread.”
I grinned. I couldn’t help it. “That’s really fucked up.”
“I know!” he yelled. “Don’t you think I know?”
“Dread?”
“I—it’s like I couldn’t get my bearings for so long because I couldn’t wrap my brain around us not being…us.”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“This is a mess.”
“It is, and I don’t want you to break up with Hayden to be with me because what if I blow up your life? But I do want you to break up with him because I know I love you more than he does because there’s no one who could ever love you more than me.”
Trace of a smile then, I could see it in the barely there curl of his lip.
“Nobody knows you better than me.”
“That’s true,” he whispered.
“And when you’re with me, that’s who you really are.”
“Yes.”
“And you wouldn’t have to be a marshal if you were with me—”
His face crumpled. “Why do you always—”
I leaned forward and grabbed hold of his hand tight. “I see you clearly. You love to help. You live for it. But the toll on your heart is greater than mine because you give more of yourself, and so a part of you breaks every single time we lose someone.”
He squeezed my hand back.
“But see,” I said, smiling at him, “if it was us, together, and you could come home every night and have me there with you, then you could stop being a marshal and instead teach art to high school students or criminal justice to ones in college because then you’d be educating and making a difference but it wouldn’t suck out your soul.”
“Jed, there’s no—who could I ever trust to protect you better than me?”
“If I stayed with Miro in Custodial WITSEC, would there be that worry?”
He jolted before covering my hand with his other. “You’ve thought about—you…you…”
“Have I thought about what I could do if I had a chance to live a life with you? Of course I have. You’re all I think about.”
“And I fooled myself into thinking I could be happy screwing all those guys when the only person I wanted to be in bed with was you.”
I wasn’t stupid. I’d known that.
“And then I went along with everything with Hayden because I felt like it was time,” he confessed. “Time to get married and settle down, time to think about a family. It all seemed so right, like I was a grown-up, but then the second you got hurt, I’m blowing my life off to make sure I’m there for you because… Jed…” He looked away, tried to pull his hand free, to move, but I wouldn’t let him.
“You only wanna be with me,” I stated with a smile. “It’s me, Bode.”
His head turned too fast, like it was on a swivel, his eyes riveted on my face because Bode, the nickname only I ever used, had been gone for years and was now, suddenly, in an instant, back.
“I want it to be me,” I said, staring into all that deep-sea blue. “Make it me. Break the really nice guy’s heart and make it me.”