“Oh, honey.” Sarah presses her lips together, thinking. “You need to be open with him, don’t shut him out.”
“I can’t help it. Jace … He wants to make everything right for me, and this is one thing he can’t. I don’t want to give him false hope.”
“He’s the man you love, though. Don’t push him away—if you push him too far you might never get him back.”
I swallow thickly. “Maybe that’s what we need, though. Maybe we’ve been thinking we’re it for each other and we’re not.”
“Don’t say that, Nova. You don’t mean it.”
I shrug. “He’s too good for me.”
At my words, Jace looks back at me, I know he can’t have heard them, but the smile he was wearing with Greyson vanishes
and he looks at me intensely like I’m some complicated math problem he can’t solve.
“All I know,” I continue, “is he deserves to be happy, and I can’t make him happy. Not right now, maybe not ever.”
Sarah tilts her head. “Did you ever think maybe he feels the same as you? That he’s hurting and still mourning?”
I wince. I know he is, but … “It’s different.”
“No, it’s not. You’re being stupid,” she says sternly. “I see what you’re doing, you’re punishing yourself by trying to push him away. You’re only going to make yourself more miserable if you lose him too.”
“That’s not it at all,” I defend, though her words hit home and I think she’s right.
She shakes her head and I swear she rolls her eyes. “Whatever you say.”
She doesn’t believe me any more than I believe myself.
“Whoa! Yeah, that’s it,” we hear Jace cheer. “Good job!” He holds up his hand for a high five from Greyson. Jimmy sits on the dock near them, his feet dangling over the water. In the water, Greyson’s line bobs. “You’re going to catch a fish in no time,” Jace tells him.
“Really?” Greyson asks. “A big one?”
“You bet.”
Jace bends, getting his own line ready before casting it. They stand side by side and I squish my eyes closed, fighting against the pain at the fact it’ll never be Beckett and Jace going fishing.
When I open them, the pain has lessened a little. Enough so I can’t help but take a picture of them. Even though this hurts right now, I know this isn’t a moment I ever want to forget.
“He loves you fiercely,” Sarah murmurs quietly beside me, almost like she’s not sure she wants to say it. “Don’t throw it back in his face.”
Jace
If I thought Nova was slipping before, she’s practically non-existent now.
I feel like she’s my roommate again—although at least then we still spoke and had delicious banter, if I do say so myself.
I’ve never felt more alone than I do now. Even when things were awful for me as a kid, none of it compares to having the girl I love stare at me like she doesn’t even see me.
It’s a pain I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
It almost eclipses the pain of losing Beckett. I feel like I’m mourning two people now, because Nova … She’s not here. It’s like she’s in a far-off land and only her body has been left behind.
I tried getting her to open up in the beginning, but she lashed out or didn’t speak at all. Now if she does speak to me it’s usually one word and I have to ask a question first.
I gave her my heart years ago, and I never want it back, but she’s squeezing it too tight so no oxygen reaches it, and if she doesn’t let go it’s going to kill me.
“I made breakfast,” I say, waiting for a sign of life from her.