Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 81333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
“I wouldn’t take you back if someone gave me the entire world to do it.”
Like it’s in slow motion, Branch’s face spirals through my mind. A need seated deep inside me to hold him, hug him, love him burns as hot as a wildfire.
“As a matter of fact,” I swallow, “someone practically gave me the entire world not to.”
“Ah, isn’t that sweet? I love how you just pretend you don’t love me.”
The smile that touches my lips is genuine. “I didn’t love you,” I say simply. “I didn’t know what love was when I was with you.”
Poppy’s eyes grow wide, her hand resting on my leg. She gives me a thumbs-up.
“Callum, go to hell.”
My phone goes sailing across the bed and I fall back into the pillows again.
“What now?” Poppy asks. “I mean, I have a plan if you want it because I looked those grapes up and—”
“Stop.” I flash her a look and try not to grin. “There’s no plan to be made.”
“What do you mean? You want him. You just said you loved him without saying it. Of course there’s a plan to be made!”
I shake my head. “This doesn’t change anything, Pop. Now he just knows what I already knew: our lives are not compatible.”
Tears well up again. “I had hoped maybe . . . Um, maybe we could figure a way around it and we . . .”
She leans forward and hugs me, letting me cry on her shoulder.
“I love him, Poppy. I think I actually fell in love with Branch Best and now it’s too late.”
CHAPTER 31
BRANCH
“This is what I get.” I say the words aloud, as if somehow hearing them will make me accept them. “You’ve gone your whole adult life knowing this would happen, yet you still got caught up.”
My legs dangle off the countertop as I sit in the kitchen, smack dab in the middle of the island. Every now and then, the soles of my feet kick against the wooden cabinets and remind me I’m still sitting here. In the same place. For a couple of hours now. My ass is starting to hurt.
I’ve never sat and watched the sun move across the sky until tonight. It’s pretty cool. The colors change from blue to purple and pink and even a fiery orange for a moment. Shadows change, birds stop flying—it’s pretty incredible. You can also get kind of philosophical watching that shit.
Pondering where my life would sit if I were comparing it to a setting sun, I have to go with the tail end of the colored phase. Layla is, without a doubt, the brightest, most organic thing that’s ever happened to me. She’s lit my life with the most basic things, the most ordinary things, just like the colors a few moments ago reflecting off the kitchen windows. It’s things like candy apples and stupid jokes and private grins that I’ve never found anywhere else and can’t imagine ever sharing with anyone else either.
I’ve always thought if I ever found love, it would come in some big lightning strike. That some massive crack of thunder would happen and light would shine down from the heavens with a little arrow saying, “This is the one for you.”
Now I know, it doesn’t work that way.
Finding love happens at Water Festivals with sugar rushes. It happens in little deli shops over ham and cheese sandwiches. It happens on beaches with stories about grandmas and really listening to each other and making an attempt to understand the other person.
It’s choosing to be together because you don’t have to be. It’s walking away when you can’t be together for their own good, no matter how much it kills you.
This is heartache. This is the thing those Beau McCrae songs are talking about, the ones I love the beats to and got stuck in my head but had no way of identifying with the lyrics.
I get it. I get it all, and it hurts like a motherfucker.
A knock pounds on the door as I lift a bottle of Jameson to my lips. “Come in,” I shout, taking a long swallow of the liquor.
The door opens and shuts, and I don’t even bother to turn around to see who it is.
“You aren’t even locking your doors now? What the hell happened while I was pissed at you?” Finn’s voice rings through the room. His footsteps grow closer as I take another drink.
“I figured I’d leave it unlocked. Maybe someone will make my day.”
“That sounds like a Clint Eastwood reference.”
I shrug.
He strolls into the kitchen. His posture is tight, his eyes curious as he takes me in. “What the fuck happened to you?”
“Just life, man. Just life.”
“I saw the Exposé thing, if that’s what you’re talking about. Callum is a dead motherfucker.”
“I was sitting here plotting his demise.”