I felt him breathe deeply next to me, his body moving slightly when he did. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it so much. I wish I could have told you, but it wasn’t until today that I made up my mind.”
I nodded, looking up at his profile. My gaze lingered on his features, on his well-defined brows, on the line of his nose, on his slightly parted lips. I could have kept staring at him for ages. It would have been easier if I did, because I wanted to. I wanted to look at him for as long as I could.
He craned his neck to look at me and flashed me a pained smile. “What is it?” he asked.
I sighed deeply. “I don’t know. I guess this is a bit selfish of me, but I was just picturing our life together. I don’t want to come on too strong, but it felt nice to think that we had a future together.”
I watched his throat work as he swallowed. “We can still have a future together.”
“Yes,” I said, sighing and turning away from him before I continued. “A very far future, considering you’re probably going to jail.”
“You don’t know that,” he said, his voice thin.
I turned to face him again. “I do, though,” I said. “I know exactly what what you’re doing means. You’re going to go in there, you’re going to confess, and they are going to book you in. They are going to fingerprint you, photograph you, match you up with your records.”
He looked at me, his expression impossible to read.
“You won’t have a lawyer, so you won’t be able to defend yourself. You will end up incriminating yourself, taking the rap for something you didn’t do, and you’re probably going to go away for long longer than if you didn’t do this.”
He shook his head. “You’re making it sound worse than it is. They’ll cut me a break.”
“You mean you hope they’ll cut your break,” I said, looking right at him. “You can’t know that they will. You can’t know anything. This is a huge risk and it might not turn out the way you want it to.”
He moved away from me, his eyes ablaze with fury. “You need to stop. I told you couldn’t change my mind. You need to stop trying.”
“I’m not trying to talk you out of anything. I’m just trying to make you see what’s actually going to happen if you do this.”
He shook his head, his hands fists on his lap. “No,” he said. “You’re wrong.”
I stared at him. “And what’s your guarantee that I’m wrong? Why is it so hard for you to imagine that what I’m saying might actually make sense?”
He shook his head again. “It’s not hard for me to imagine. I just don’t want you to be right.”
“Do you think that is a good enough reason to ignore me?”
He opened his mouth slightly before he scoffed. “You know, for someone as smart as you, you can be kind of obtuse.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head too, staring right back at him. I could feel the anger building up in my chest, climbing up my body until it reached the top of my head. I had to grit my teeth before I continued, spitting every single word out with a mix of derision and anger. “I’m not being obtuse. I’m working with the information that you’re given me. If there is other information, and you’re keeping that for me, then that’s on you. You know that that’s on you.”
His jaw tightened as he looked me up and down. “Has it ever occurred to you that I might be keeping things from you for your own safety?”
“Yes,” I said, practically screaming at him through my teeth, though I was trying my best to be discreet because we were in public. I didn’t want any attention to be called to us, because things were already tense enough. For a split second, I wondered if this would count as our first fight. “It has occurred to me. You don’t get to make that decision for me, remember?”
He shook his head. “You are so fucking stubborn,” he said. “It’s ridiculous. You haven’t changed a bit.”
“Neither have you!” I exclaimed. “You’re the same. Just doing weird, shady—”
“Stop!” he said. “Stop! I’m doing it for you, okay?”
“What?”
“I’m doing this for you,” he said. “Just—I don’t want you to get hurt, they are after me again, this is the only way I can protect you, alright?”
“I don’t need protection,” I replied. “I’m a big girl.”
“You do need protection!” he said, so loudly he practically startled the birds that were all around us. “Of course you need protection. I love you, Jess, I don’t want anything to happen to you—”
“Wait,” I said, holding a hand up to stop him. He quieted down immediately as he realized what he had said, looking me up and down.
He opened his mouth, as if he was going to say something, but he closed it before he could.
My eyes widened a little as I looked at him. “You love me?” I repeated, my voice a whisper.
“Yes,” he said, just as quietly. “Is that so hard for you to believe?”
I blinked a little as I thought about what I was supposed to say. My heart was doing flips in my chest as I thought about it, and as my gaze settled on his face again, there was no doubt that I felt the
