I was sad.

Sadder than sad.

I was so damn sad it made my mouth taste like ash. It made my heart ache.

I’d never really experienced grief before, but this sure as heck felt pretty close to it. So far, I’d been lucky enough to never have anyone close to me die, but this… I could understand how some people never recovered from it if this was a fraction of what it felt like to lose someone.

Neither one of us had said much the last hour and a half since we’d left the beach house en route to the airport. He’d brought me breakfast at the crack of dawn again, but instead, this time, we’d woken up in his bed together. We’d showered together, with him washing my back and kissing my shoulders and hugging me while we were wet and slippery. I’d sat at the kitchen island while he’d cooked, and then we’d headed to the deck together to eat the waffles and side of berries he’d made.

We both knew what today was. What going to the airport meant. It meant this vacation was over. Our time together had come to an end.

It meant that Aaron would have to drive back to Shreveport, say goodbye to his loved ones, and then drive all the way to Kentucky to get back to his base.

It meant I’d go from spending all day with him to… not.

Every single thought that ricocheted around in my head since reality had really settled in had been focused on the fact that I had no idea when the next time I would see him or be near him would be.

And honestly, I’d been fighting back tears the entire time. This didn’t seem fair. It didn’t seem fair at all that now that I had him, I had to let him go. I had to go back home. For the first time in forever, there wasn’t so much comfort in it.

“Did you check in to your flight already?” came Aaron’s low, distant voice from behind the steering wheel. We’d left later than we should have, but I hadn’t really cared or worried too much about how close we were cutting it.

I swallowed hard, fighting back the sadness that seemed capable of crushing my lungs. “No,” I muttered as we passed a sign pointing us toward the airport.

It wasn’t my imagination that Aaron slowed his truck down. “Ruby…”

I didn’t want to look at him. I couldn’t. “I wish I could stay here with you longer,” I said, keeping my gaze focused on the blurry scenery outside the window. “And I feel really bad I’m not as excited as I should be to go see my dad because I’m sad to leave you.”

“Ru,” he whispered, gulping so loud I could hear him.

I wasn’t going to look over. Nope.

“Hey,” he said, steering the truck to a cluster of lined up cars that told me our time was about to run out. “I don’t want to drop you off either, you know that, don’t you?”

I shook my head, still looking outside. Where was a rainstorm when I needed one? I couldn’t even hiccup without him hearing it.

“Ruby,” he repeated, and I pinched my lips together as he pulled into the drop-off lane, trying so hard not to cry. I knew I failed when at least five tears just jumped right out of my eyes.

“Ruby Cube,” he said. “Would you look at me?”

I shook my head again, two more tears jumping to their deaths of shame.

“Hey.”

I swallowed and slowly turned my head to look at him, totally conscious that there were tears in my eyes, and I had no hopes of hiding them, and knowing full well that the second I looked at him, I was going to cry.

And that’s exactly what happened.

One second I was looking out the window, and the next, I was shifting in his passenger seat, meeting those warm brown eyes, and then four tears turned into a hundred and I whispered, “Why does it feel like I’m never going to see you again?” I blubbered.

Before I could register what he was doing, Aaron undid his seat belt and reached for me, his hands going to my face across the center console, palming me, cupping me, bringing us forehead to forehead. His lips hovered millimeters from mine, full and a shade of pink I’d only ever seen on him before, and he said the words that ate me up completely. “This isn’t goodbye. You know that, don’t you?” his voice croaked, pretty much ending my life.

I didn’t get a chance to answer before he answered his own question, his voice breaking and creaking and raspier than ever. “You know that. You know you’ll see me again,” he claimed, to me, to himself, to everyone in the world.

Pinching my lips together, I wanted to tell him that it didn’t feel that way. That this felt like goodbye forever, but maybe it was just the part of me that didn’t completely understand or accept separation. I could admit it. When my dad had first moved back to California, I’d cried every day for months. I’d gotten used to the idea, but it had taken time. There was no hiding it. And yet this… this felt just like that but worse somehow because I didn’t know what would happen to Aaron in his career.

I wanted it all, as selfish as it made me.

All of it.

With his forehead still pressed to mine, his mouth kissed one of my cheeks and then the other. He brushed my lips with his, tenderly, tenderly, tenderly. One corner and then the other. His hands the gentlest thing I’d ever felt in my life. And he spoke into my skin, into my heart, my soul, everything in me. “I don’t want to leave you. I want to turn this truck around and take you back to the house with me, and then I want to take you to Kentucky and have you there while I figure my life out this next year. With you.” He gulped, trailing off.

The sound that came out of me was somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and I didn’t miss the smile he made into my cheek.

“This is just for a little bit. You know that, don’t you?” he pleaded into me. “Tell me you know that.”

Did I know that? It didn’t take much soul searching to know that I did. I did know he didn’t want to drop me off at the airport, to let me go back to the place I’d almost always called home.

The thumb he had on my right cheek made a swipe across it. His nose touched mine, and his voice was weak as he whispered, “You can come visit me whenever you want, and don’t say anything about the money. Visit me every month. Every other week. Fucking every week if you want,” he offered. “This is only temporary. Understand me?”

I closed my eyes and nodded, not having the strength in me to say words that wouldn’t come out like cries and pleas of take me with you, please, please, please.

“I love you, Rubes, and I know you love me too,” he whispered. “You’re the one who told me a few thousand miles wouldn’t really matter in the grand scheme of life, remember?”

That had me almost cracking up. Almost, but it sounded broken, and I didn’t sound like myself. “Yes,” I croaked, admitting it but not wanting to.

“You and me, we’ll figure this out. We’ll make this work.”

I was back to pinching my lips and nodding, a few more tears streaming out of my eyes at the infinite sadness that weighed down on me even though I knew he was speaking the truth.

“I love you, stalker. Time. Distance. Nothing is going to change that. We’ll figure this out, I promise.” He kissed my lips again, and that time I kissed him right back. Warm lips on warm lips, and I wished we had a motel to stop at to get under the covers together, skin to skin, his chest to my face, his legs wrapped in mine, one last time, just one last time. I should have been embarrassed by how clingy I was being, but I couldn’t find it in me. Not even a little.

“Do you believe me?” he asked, brushing the tip of his nose against mine like I would have loved in any other occasion.

I nodded.

“Tell me.” He kept on Eskimo kissing me. Holding my face. Keeping me together. “Tell me,” he repeated, sounding almost anguished.

“I believe you,” I said. “My head knows I’ll see you again, but my heart thinks you’re leaving me here and I’m never going to see you again.”

“Never see you again? I couldn’t forget you in a hundred years if I tried, Ru. And nothing would get me to try. Not a single thing. Everything happens for a reason, remember?”

“What happened for a reason?”

“You got me in the program. They could’ve given my name and address to anybody else, but you got me.”

I just barely held back a choke. “I thought you got me.”

His voice was low. “No, Ruron. You got me.”

I screwed my eyes closed and nodded, leaning into him so that I buried my face into his neck. “I’m probably going to be a really shitty, clingy girlfriend.”

“You couldn’t be shitty at anything.”

I laughed.

“You’re mine, RC. That’s not changing.”

I gulped, feeling like I was drowning. With a sob stuck in my throat, I nodded, quick, quick, quick. I was going to cry. I was going to freaking cry for real, and I didn’t want to.

“I wanted to park—”

“It’s okay. I need to run in anyway,” I gritted out, staring at the dashboard. I swallowed. “Will you give me a hug outside at least?”

He grunted, opening his door and getting out before I’d even undone my seat belt. By the time I closed my door, he’d already pulled my suitcase and bag out, stacking one on top of the other. I took him in, every single inch I’d seen the night before. With his hands fisted at his sides, I could tell Aaron was breathing hard from the way his shirt hugged his chest. I took my time trailing my gaze higher up until it landed on those features I’d think of all the time. He was watching me, the saddest smile I’d ever seen on his face, because it was filled with so much affection and love. It cracked my heart in half.

“Come here,” he said, holding one hand toward me.

I went. I wrapped my arms around his waist, and I hugged him like I’d never see him again. His mouth was at my ear as he squeezed me to him, like he was trying to conjoin us.

“I’d take you with me I could, Ru, but have fun with your dad,” he said, nuzzling me as his hand made a trail up and down my spine. “We’ll make this work. I promise.”

* * *

I didn’t cry on the plane ride, and I didn’t cry when my mom drove up to the arrivals section of the airport and then talked my ear off the entire ride back home, telling me all about Jasmine going to train with her coach again finally.

I didn’t cry when I got into my room that night either.

But when I lay down in bed, this feeling of missing Aaron like crazy hit me right in the solar plexus.

And then, I did cry. Just a little. Two little tears. But they were enough.

I texted Aaron, using some of the same words he’d used on me before.

Thirty seconds later, a response from him came in.

I didn’t get a chance to reply before another message from him came in.

Ten seconds after, my phone chimed again.

And how could I be sad after that?