Prologue
Aaron
The taste of our combined tears made me cry harder. I couldn’t help the sobs escaping me as I held him in my arms and kissed him with everything I was. I poured all of my sorrow and grief into our kiss, trying to burn his memory into my soul.
I leaned back and looked into his tear-filled blue eyes and sobbed out, “I love you more than anything.” I cupped his cheeks and brushed away his tears with my thumbs.
He nodded and gripped the front of my shirt. “I love you too.”
He gave me a sad smile before leaning in and kissing me again, only this time it was soft and gentle, almost like he was saying goodbye with his lips. When he broke the kiss, I could see it in his eyes. This was going to be our last kiss, the last time I’d hold him in my arms, the last time I’d ever look deep into his beautiful eyes that always held such emotion and saw the world in such a different way than I did. Where he saw beauty and sunshine, I saw cruelty and darkness. He was always the one to make me see things differently. To see the best in people, in the world, and he made me strive to see things through his eyes.
He was such a beautiful soul.
My gorgeous Finn.
And we were saying goodbye.
Forever.
Suddenly panicking, I pulled him close and said fiercely, “I could stay. I don’t have to go. I’ll come with you, instead.”
He shook his head. “And what would you do there, Aaron?”
I shrugged a little. “I don’t know. I don’t care. I’ll… get a job somewhere.”
“You’re not giving up your dream for me.”
I felt more tears fall from my eyes. “But you are my dream.”
“Aaron,” he breathed out before closing his eyes and leaning on me, tucking his head under my chin like he always did. “You’d resent me.” His voice was muffled against my skin, but I still understood what he’d said.
“No… I could never.”
He leaned back again and gave me a sad smile. “Maybe not now. But in a few years time when you realize what you gave up, what you can never go back to…” He shrugged. “You’d resent me, and then it would all be for nothing.”
I knew he was right, but I didn’t want to admit it. “Let’s try the long-distance thing.”
One corner of his mouth shot up in a small grin. “You know that would never work.”
“Why not? We can text and call. We can make it work.”
He reached up and traced my eyebrows with his fingers, then ran his hand through my dark brown hair. “Baby, we’d never see each other. Neither of us can even afford a car, let alone a plane ticket. We’d only make it worse. I don’t think I could stand talking to you and not seeing you.”
As usual he was right. I knew he was correct, but it was still a hard pill to swallow. The only reason either of us were getting out of this small town was because we’d both gotten full ride scholarships to college… only they were colleges on the opposite ends of the country.
Still, I said, “You don’t even want to try?”
He let out a sob. “Aaron… I…” He squeezed his eyes shut and started trembling, so I pulled him back into my arms. After he’d calmed a little, he whispered, “If it’s meant to be, fate will bring us back together.”
I held him tighter and closed my eyes, letting more tears fall. I knew he believed that. He believed in fate and soul mates and all that crap. The thing was, though, that I didn’t. I didn’t believe. I knew that after he walked away from me, I’d never see him again.
I didn’t want it to happen. I didn’t want to let him walk away. I wanted to ask him to move with me. Tell him that we’d get an apartment, that I’d get a job and we could make a life together. But just like he wasn’t willing to let me give up on my dream, I wasn’t about to let him give up on his.
We were doing the right thing. We were.
But it sure as hell didn’t feel like it when my heart was ripping into a million pieces.
He stayed in my arms for a long time. I held him to me, wishing that I was wrong. Wishing that fate was real and that it’d bring him back to me. I knew it wasn’t, but one thing I’d learned from my short time with the man I loved was that there was always hope. Even if it was small, even if it felt hopeless, there was always a little bit there. So I grabbed onto that tiny string of hope with everything I was… otherwise I’d never let him go. I’d have stayed there, under that tree, holding him forever.
But I couldn’t. I had to let go. I had to let him follow his dreams, just the same as he was letting me.
So after holding him late into the night, I finally pulled away. I told him I loved him and he told me too. Then we kissed lightly and I let him slip out of my arms and walk away. Before he turned the corner, he looked over his shoulder at me and gave me that sad, gorgeous smile of his, and then he was gone.
Gone from my life. Forever.
I sobbed and fell to the ground, pulling my knees up, trying to use them to stop my heart from breaking. But it didn’t work.
I cried until the sun came up, and then I cried some more.
Finn was gone… and he took a big piece of my heart with him.