Emotion glimmered in his eyes and he seemed to swallow hard. “Yeah.”
“You came.”
“You were right. About everything. The day you called me out, you messed me up. The idea of you thinking I didn’t love you ripped me apart and I didn’t know why, because I wanted to be angry with you. You didn’t do anything wrong, but I wanted to be angry with you because it was so much easier than being angry with myself.” He exhaled heavily and quickly, like he couldn’t get enough air. “When I got home that afternoon my mom kind of went off on one. She was worried about me and she said we were moving back to the States.”
My banging heart stopped.
I was sure of it.
The horrible emptiness in my chest couldn’t be anything else. “You’re going back to America?”
He shook his head quickly. “God no. As soon as she started talking about it, planning, I freaked out. As bad as I feel, as guilty as I feel, about walking away from Stevie when he needed me, the idea of never seeing you again scares the hell out of me, Comet. I’m sorry I made you think that I blamed you. I never blamed you. You were right about me blaming myself, though. I didn’t just walk away from Stevie when things got hard with him because it was what I felt I needed to do to protect you. I did it to protect me, too. Losing my dad and learning the truth was hard enough, I didn’t think I could deal with Stevie’s problems, with Carole’s sickness. So I walked away. Not only did I walk away, I got myself a pretty great life. A beautiful girl, a new team, great friends. And Stevie watched me get all of those things while I pretended like my friendship with him never happened. That’s on me. I just didn’t know how to admit that to myself, so I pretended that choosing you was where everything went wrong.
“I’m sorry, Comet. I told my mom I don’t want to leave, so we’re staying. And that doesn’t mean you have to forgive me or even want to be with me again, and you can even be pissed at me for making such a huge decision based off the fact that I love you because I know you hate the whole codependency thing but—”
I cut him off midramble throwing my arms around his neck and tugging his head down to mine so I could kiss him. The feel of his warm lips moving against mine felt so utterly epic, and I poured every emotion inside of me since we broke up into that kiss. Relief and love were the foremost.
Tobias broke the kiss to wrap his arms tighter around me and hug me so hard that he lifted me off the ground. “I missed you so much,” he said hoarsely, as I clung to him. “I’m so sorry.”
When I was finally back on my feet, I caressed his face and said, “No more apologies.”
“I’ll try not to do anything where one will be necessary afterward.”
“Hmm, I don’t think I’m naive enough to believe that will happen,” I joked.
He shook his head in wonder. “I know how lucky I am to have you, Comet. I hope you know that.”
“It’s nice to hear it anyway.” I smiled, trying not to cry like a cheeseball.
“And I am so proud of you for getting up on that stage tonight. And doing it in front of your dad...you’re amazing.”
“Thank you.” I studied him, seeing the weary sadness that still lingered in the back of his eyes. “What can I do to be there for you now?”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Stevie.”
I felt him tense against me. “I don’t have a magic answer to that. I can’t help how I feel about him. I should have done something more for him, and that guilt won’t just go away. I have to be honest about that.”
I nodded, understanding.
Stevie’s death had changed Tobias. That was the truth. It had changed us both. It was different for Tobias, because he hadn’t found a way to forgive himself yet. Maybe he never would. Maybe it would continue to change him or maybe not.
That was the thing about living in the now and accepting that most people weren’t heroic storybook characters. They could be extraordinary, but most days they were flawed and ordinary. And ordinary people had wounds that sometimes never healed.
I loved Tobias. I would accept him, wounds and all, as I had from the moment we met, just as he had accepted me with all of mine.
When you were in love like we were in love, there existed a temporary forever ahead of you. A knowledge that what we had was for life, but that life was only guaranteed by the second.
Which meant that every second I had a choice to make, I had to choose what would really make me happy. What most people never learned was that sometimes what would make us happy the most also scares us the most. Sometimes being happy meant being brave.
I aimed to be brave every second of every day.