The weeks that follow our trip to New York are some of the happiest of my life. Sebastian has shown me the kind of love I only thought existed in romance books and fairy-tales. He’s turned out to be the polar opposite of who I once thought he was and exactly what I had been missing in my life. But I’m also painfully aware that our days together could very well be numbered.
All I want to do is pause time, hold onto the moments with Sebastian while I can, but it seems like the tighter I try to grasp it the further out of my reach it slips. December turns into January and January into February with no signs of slowing down.
I’ve become one of those girls. You know, the ones who are so wrapped up in a boy that everything else just kind of falls to the wayside. Yeah, that’s me. I know it. My friends know it. My mom knows it. We all know it, and yet there’s nothing I can do to change it. Every second that I’m not with Sebastian feels like I’m suffocating. He says it’s the same for him too, though sometimes I wonder if I’m holding on a little more tightly than he is.
“Hey.” Bree stops by my locker just as I close it, pulling me from the inner turmoil that haunts me daily.
“Hey. Everything okay?” I ask, concern lacing my voice. It’s not like Bree to just show up at my locker out of the blue, unless of course, something’s wrong.
“Yeah, fine.” She does a crap job of lying to me. “I just…”
“What?” I urge her to continue.
“I just ran into Blake.” She lets out a slow breath. “With his tongue rammed down Ava Balinsky’s throat.”
“God, that asshole,” I seethe, hating what he put Bree through and what he continues to put her through every day.
It’s bad enough that in just four months she is going to be having his baby, and he has yet to even acknowledge it since everything went down at Sebastian’s Halloween party. But to parade girl after girl in front of her face to purposely hurt her is low even for a guy like him.
He’s lucky he’s still able to walk around these halls freely after what he put Bree through. If it were up to me he would be in jail for putting his hands on my friend. But Bree being Bree, she insisted on letting things go. I think a part of her still loves him even after everything he did to her.
“It pisses me off that he thinks I even care who he kisses.” She crosses her arms in front of herself. “Stupid bitch can have him. Maybe she’ll get lucky, and he won’t knock her around like he did me.”
To someone outside looking in, Bree almost seems completely unaffected by the mess Blake has made of her life… Almost. She’s always been a good actress, always putting on a show for everyone. But over the past few months, I’ve seen the holes in her exterior. She’s still hurting over what Blake put her through, and then, of course, there’s the baby and the fact that she’s going to be a single mom at seventeen. If I was her, I’m pretty sure I’d have fallen apart a hundred times over by now.
“Who cares what he thinks.” I give her a reassuring smile, slinging my bag over my shoulder. “You’re way too good for him anyway, always have been.”
“Someone needs to tell his ass that, knock him down a few pegs.” She walks directly next to me as we make our way down the hall.
“Trust me, he already knows. Right now, he’s just throwing a temper tantrum, showing his ass because he knows how bad he messed up. He’s lucky Sebastian hasn’t killed him after what he pulled at Halloween.”
“You’re so lucky to have him,” Bree interrupts before I can say more. “Sebastian,” she clarifies. “The way he looks at you…” She trails off for a long moment, her right hand settling on top of her swollen belly. “What I wouldn’t give to have someone look at me that way.”
“Someday someone will,” I promise. “You’ll see.”
“I doubt it. Who’s going to want me after this?” She gestures to her belly. “I’m tarnished goods now.”
“Don’t say that. You are not. That baby is going to be an extension of you, and when you meet someone who loves you the way you deserve to be loved, he’s going to love your child just as much.”
“You’re way too optimistic for your own good.” She rolls her eyes, stopping outside of her math class.
“I can’t help it. I just know things are going to work out—for all of us.”
“I hope you’re right.” She gives me a half-hearted smile. “I gotta go. Mr. Jenkins will have my ass if I’m late again.”
“Have fun.” I give her a half wave before picking up the pace, dipping into my Economics class just as the bell rings.
***
“Oh my god, Tess, I just heard.” Courtney slides down next to me at the lunch table where Bree and I are already planted. “LSU, that’s incredible.”
I’m instantly confused by her statement, but try to hide the fact that I have no idea what she’s talking about.
“Sebastian must be over the moon right now,” she continues. “A full scholarship. God, that man really does get everything he wants.”
It takes several moments for her words to sink in and once they do, I feel like the floor is falling out beneath me. My chest tightens and suddenly I feel like it’s near impossible to pull in a breath.
“Tess?” Courtney looks at me, her eyes wide in bewilderment. It takes a solid minute for realization to dawn, and the second it does all the color drains from her face.
“Oh god, you didn’t know.” She shakes her head from side to side. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Tess, I’m so sorry. I just assumed. I mean, Ant just told me this morning.”
My earlier optimism that Bree had pointed out turns full circle, and my stomach knots with dread.
Sebastian got into LSU—a full scholarship?
The fact that Ant has known this long enough to share it with Courtney, and I had no idea only intensifies my feelings on the matter. It’s one thing to find out your boyfriend has been accepted to a college a thousand miles away, it’s another thing entirely to find out the news from someone other than your boyfriend.
“I knew he was applying.” I shake off the panic I feel creeping its way in long enough to answer my friend. “I just didn’t know he’d heard back.” I try to brush it off like it isn’t a big deal even though it feels like a very big deal to me.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, it’s fine,” I reassure Court, not wanting her to feel worse than I know she already does. “I’m sure he’ll tell me about it later, probably just still trying to process it all.” I force a smile.
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Can you do me a favor and not say anything to Ant about me telling you?”
“I won’t say a word to Anthony,” I promise, knowing there’s no way I’m going to be able to make the same promise when it comes to Sebastian.
When he finally makes an appearance a few seconds later I can’t even look at him. Bree scoots down a seat to let him sit next to me, though honestly, I wish she would’ve just stayed put. It’s easier to pretend like nothing’s wrong when he’s not sitting so close to me, his hand immediately finding my upper thigh under the table.
“Hey, babe.” He kisses my temple, his gaze burning into the side of my face when I make no attempt to respond.
I want to be mature about this. I want to handle it rationally and not cause a big scene, but the longer I sit here the angrier I become. If LSU did, in fact, offer him a scholarship to play ball and he hasn’t told me about it, it only means one thing. He’s planning on accepting or worse, he already has.
There’s no other explanation.
I knew this was coming. But with graduation just over three months away, I was starting to wonder if maybe he was reconsidering the schools he had shown interest in. I think a part of me was holding out hope that he simply wouldn’t be able to leave me.
I know that’s really selfish of me, but I can’t help it. The thought of being here without Sebastian is just too much to even fathom.
“You okay?” Sebastian finally asks after several long moments have passed.
“Perfect,” I grind out, turning to face him.
“You don’t seem perfect,” he observes, his voice low so only I can hear him.
“No?” I hate how sarcastic it comes out, but it’s like the more seconds that tick by the more out of control I feel.
“No. You don’t.” His eyebrows draw together in confusion.
“Funny. I guess learning that my boyfriend is moving like twenty hours away has put a bit of a damper on my mood.” With that, I push to a stand and quickly exit the cafeteria, dropping my still full tray into a nearby trashcan on my way out.
I can hear Sebastian’s footsteps close behind me as I stomp through the empty hallway toward the back doors. I don’t bother to turn around when he says my name. I just need to get out of this building.
Sebastian catches up to me the second the sun hits my face, his hand closing down around my forearm just as I suck in a deep inhale of cold air.
“Tess.” He spins me toward him.
“Don’t Tess me.” I rip my arm out of his grip.
“I can explain,” he starts, but I quickly cut him off.
“Explain what, Sebastian? How you purposely have been keeping things from me? How my best friend knew you had received a full scholarship to play football for LSU, and I didn’t even know they were a serious contender?”
“You knew LSU was where I wanted to go.”
“Yeah, because you mentioned it once—months ago.” I swipe angrily at the tears that seem to come on without warning.
“Tess.”
“Are you going to LSU, Sebastian?”
“I was planning on discussing everything with you tonight.”
“Well, you can just get it over with and tell me now. I mean, you didn’t wait to share the news with other people, so clearly it isn’t some big secret.”
“I only told Ant, and that’s because I needed someone to bounce it off of. You’re telling me that if you got a full scholarship to Columbia and accepting it meant we’d be separated that you wouldn’t talk to Courtney and Bree first, get their opinions.”
I hate that I know he’s right. That’s exactly what I would do. But that doesn’t change how hurt I feel that I had to find out the way I did.
“So you’re going to accept?” I question, the anger in my voice faltering.
“I don’t want to leave you, Tess.” He takes a step toward me. “But this is it. This is everything I’ve worked for.”
“Are you going to accept it?” I repeat.
“I already have.”
My eyes instantly go wide, and a rush of wind leaves my body like someone has just sucker punched me right in the stomach.
Deep down, the rational part of me knows this is a good thing. Sebastian’s right, this is everything he’s been working toward. He was just offered a full scholarship to play football at his dream college, and here I am souring the moment like a damn spoiled child. But at the same time, I can’t help it. I can’t help that I feel angry and hurt. I can’t help that I want to scream and yell and make sure he knows how much I hate every second of this.
I stumble backward, not sure when the ground decided it wanted to swallow me up but willing to let it take me down either way. Before I can make it very far, Sebastian’s arms are around me and I’m pressed firmly to his chest, his soothing voice soft against my ear.
“We’ll figure it out, Tess. I promise. You’re all that I care about, all that matters. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think it was the best thing for us. We can’t hold each other back from doing what we’ve planned. As hard as it will be to leave you, I don’t want to wake up five years from now and resent you for the choices I made. We can still do everything we want and be together at the same time. I’m not saying it will be easy, but I know we can do it.”
“LSU is over a thousand miles away,” I choke, letting my anger give way to the fear that is controlling it in the first place.
“I can come up on some weekends and holidays, it’s less than a three-hour flight, and I can easily make that when time allows. And we’ll talk on the phone every day,” he reassures me, pulling back to meet my gaze. “I swear to you, Tess, no amount of miles is going to change my love for you. If nothing, it’s only going to make me love you even more. And we’ll cherish the time we get together more because we won’t get it as often. I know we can make this work, Tess.” He cups my cheek, the warmth of his hand soothing my cold flesh.
“I’m scared,” I admit, swiping at the tears that continue to leak from my eyes, wishing like hell I knew how to stop them all together.
“I know you are, baby. I am, too. But I also know I need to do this.”
“I know you do,” I admit, letting out a deep breath. “And I love that you’re determined enough to go after what you want head on. I just hate that your dream is taking you so far away from me.”
“We still have some time to figure it all out, okay?” His eyes search mine for reassurance. “I’m so sorry that you found out this way, but I’m not sorry that you know. You were the only person I wanted to share this with, the first person I thought of when I got the call from the coach, but I also knew that telling you would be one of the hardest things for me to do.”
“I’m sorry I made it even harder.” Guilt tightens in my chest.
“Don’t be. I should’ve just manned up and told you the instant I found out. Truth be told, I was scared. I’m still scared. But I know as long as I have your support, we can find a way to make this work. Just tell me I won’t lose you over this.”
“You’re not going to lose me,” I promise. “Ever.”
He lets out a deep sigh and tightens his grip on me. “I want to spend every second I can with you. You’re going to be so sick of me come June, you’ll be ready for me to leave.”
“June?” I question, assuming he had until at least August.
“Summer conditioning starts the first week in June.”
“Wow. That’s really soon.” The reality of the entire situation sits like cinder blocks on my shoulders, weighing me down.
We have just over three months left before he leaves and suddenly the days between now and then feel like seconds ticking by on a bomb set to explode.
“It is. And I hate that we won’t get to spend the summer together. But this is what it takes to play college ball. It’s going to be demanding and time-consuming, but I’m up for the challenge. Who knows, maybe next year you’ll decide LSU sounds a hell of a lot better than Columbia, and you can come be my own private cheerleader,” he teases.
Truth be told, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t already considering it. While yes, Columbia is the dream, I honestly don’t care where I go so long as I’m with Sebastian. I make a mental note to check out their admissions page later tonight.
“I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself,” I retort, deciding not to rush into telling him anything until I know for sure that it’s something I’m willing to do.
Could I see myself picking up and moving hours away from everyone and everything I’ve ever known just to be with Sebastian—yes. But I still have over a year before I graduate, and I know so much can happen in that time. I just need to slow down and remember to take it one day at a time.
“Come on. We should probably head back in.” He drops a kiss to my forehead before turning to lead me back inside.
I didn’t realize how cold it was outside until the stifling heat inside hits me like a brick wall the second we enter.
“Sebastian.” I stop just inside, turning to face him. “Promise me that no matter what happens, you’ll always be honest with me. No matter how hard the truth may be. I need to know that there won’t be anything standing between us. If we’re going to make this work, I need you to promise me.”
“I promise, Tess. I promise a million times over.” He pulls me back into his arms. “Don’t overthink things. Just trust in this—in me, in us. We’re going to be just fine. You’ll see.”
“I’m going to hold you to that,” I say, smiling for the first time since all this started as I peer up at him.
“I hope you do.” He grins, pressing a firm kiss to my mouth.