But Sam would respect that. He’d never push me beyond what I was comfortable with. Biting my lip, I took one last look at him.
“I -” The words I wanted to say weighed heavily on my tongue. “Let me know when you’re leaving, yeah? We’ll say goodbye over coffee.”
My heart couldn’t bear the idea of this being the last time I would see him.
But I had to go, letting the door thud closed behind me.
Chapter Nineteen
Sam
Watching Helena leave felt bad. Not just any sort of ordinary bad, either. It felt awful, like my heart was being ripped out all over again. And once again, it was something neither of us wanted. Memories of breaking up once already flooded through me. The way it had hurt, the way I had missed Helena so fucking much.
I didn’t want to go through that again. Nor did I want Helena to go through that again.
So she was probably right to leave, yeah? It was the best thing to do. We couldn’t let our feelings take over, couldn’t let…
Ah, fuck it!
No.
“Helena!” I called, running after her, the front door slamming behind me. I caught her before she even had the chance to get to her car. “Helena, wait!”
My heart was beating so hard against my chest that I wondered if she could hear it despite the noise outside, despite not being closer to me. Helena’s cheeks were tear-stained. It just made me want to make things better for her. It made me want to offer any sort of promise.
But it wasn’t just the moment. It was her. I wanted to make things work and I was sure I could.
“Date me.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could even stop them, before I could even think about them. But yeah. Yeah.
“Date me, Helena,” I said more confidently. “But also maybe come back inside so we can talk about it. But only if you want to. I think you do. You do, right? Fuck, I’m rambling now, but will you date me?”
Her eyes were wide with shock, taking me in carefully. “Sam.” Her cheeks flushed behind the tracks of her tears, her bitten lip making me want to pull her into my arms all over again.
We had to talk first. “What on earth do you mean, Sam?” Her confusion was obvious. And probably fair enough; I hadn’t thought this through in a way that made much sense.
“How can I date you when we don’t even live in the same country?”
“With difficulty,” I answered instantly. “I’m not saying it’d be easy, but... fuck, come on, Helena, come back inside so my parents’ neighbors don’t have to watch this.” Which they definitely would. Hell, I was pretty sure that if I was a neighbor with something like this going on I’d want to watch.
Holding my hand out, I hoped she’d take it. Helena hesitated before she reached out to take my hand. She gave it a squeeze that made me smile. Once we were back inside, I led her through to the living room, sure we could have a more productive discussion here than we had in the kitchen.
Well. Hopefully, we could do more of the stuff we’d done in the kitchen after we talked about this.
“I think we made a mistake ten years ago,” I told Helena once we’d sat down. She hadn’t pulled her hand back yet, so I began to absentmindedly stroke her thumb with mine. “We were young and the world seemed... bigger and scarier. It feels a bit scary now, but...”
I took a deep breath before giving Helena a soft smile. “I don’t want to spend another ten years without you in my life, Helena. Yeah, you’re right, we are in different countries but... fuck it. Let’s try. I want to try.”
All I could do was hope that she did too. Raising her hand to my chest, I pressed it against where my heart was beating so fast. “Give me a chance? Give us a chance?” I was so sure she didn’t want us to spend another ten years apart, all I needed was a chance.
Her gaze dropped to her hand against my chest, then lifted to take in my hopeful expression. “Of course,” she said, the words barely a whisper. “Of course, I want to give us a chance, Sam, but -”
She bit her lip, as if catching the uncertainty and trying to hold it back. She shook her head, dark curls bouncing around that beautiful face.
“I don’t understand what you’re suggesting. You agreed that neither of us should give up our career. So how can we date?”
She sighed, looking so unhappy. I wanted to kiss all her cares away. Maybe, at twenty, I would have tried. Now, I knew that we actually needed to talk about it, come up with a plan. Together.
“Would you come back every other summer?” she asked. “I can’t take the whole off-season off work, but I could visit Utah for a few weeks.”
“Every summer,” I promised easily. “I’ll come back every summer. Maybe not always for three months, but you get vacation days, right? So we’ll take those. There’s weekends when you’re free and could fly out to Salt Lake. And same for me, I’ll come out when I don’t have games.”
Ten years ago it had seemed impossible to make a relationship work long distance and long term, but looking back on it, I would have taken that over not being with Helena. And now I had that chance. We could figure things out.
There was no way this would be easy, but
