America squeezed my hand. “What happened?”
I shrugged. “I lost it.”
“I feel like I’m riding in the car with Travis instead of my boyfriend.”
I breathed out through my nose. “It won’t happen again.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw her face compress.
“Do you still love me?”
Her words were like a punch to the gut, and I coughed once, trying to catch my breath. “What?”
Her eyes glossed over. “Do you still love me? Is it because I said no?”
“You … you want to talk about this now? I mean … of course I love you. You know that, Mare. I can’t believe you just asked me that.”
She wiped an escaped tear from her cheek and looked out the window. The weather outside mirrored the storm in her eyes. “I don’t know what happened.”
My throat tightened, choking off any reply I might have had. Words didn’t come to me. I alternated between staring at her in confusion and watching the road.
“I love you.” She balled her elegant thin fingers into a fist and propped them under her chin, her elbow on the door’s armrest. “I’ve wanted to talk to you about the way things have been between us lately, but I was scared … and … I didn’t know what to say. And—”
“America? Is this a … is this like a good-bye trip?”
She turned to me. “You tell me.”
I didn’t realize my teeth had been clenched until my jaw began to hurt. I tightly closed my eyes and then blinked a few times, trying to concentrate on the road, keeping the Charger between the white and yellow lines. I wanted to pull over to talk, but with the hard rain and limited sight distance, I knew it would be too dangerous. I wouldn’t take the chance with the love of my life in the car—even if she didn’t believe she was at the moment.
“We don’t talk,” she said. “When did we stop talking?”
“When we started loving each other so much that it was too scary to chance it? At least, that’s what it was for me—or is,” I said.
Saying the truth out loud was both terrifying and a relief. I’d been keeping it in for so long that letting it go made me feel a little lighter, but not knowing how she would react made me wish I could take it back.
But this was what she wanted—to talk, the truth—and she was right. It was time. The silence had been ruining us. Instead of enjoying our new chapter together, I had been lingering in the why not, the not yet, and the when. I had been impatient, and it was poisoning me. Did I love the thought of us more than I loved her? That didn’t even make sense.
“Jesus, I’m sorry, Mare,” I spit out.
She hesitated. “For what?”
My face screwed into disgust. “For the way I’ve been acting. For keeping things from you. For being impatient.”
“What have you been keeping from me?”
She looked so nervous. It broke my heart.
I pulled her hand to my lips and kissed her knuckles. She turned to face me, pulling up one leg and holding her knee to her chest. She needed something else to hold on to, bracing herself for my answer. The rain-speckled windows were beginning to fog, softening her. She was the most beautiful and saddest thing I’d ever seen. She was strong and confident, and I’d reduced her to the worried big-eyed girl next to me.
“I love you, and I want to be with you forever.”
“But?” she prompted.
“No buts. That’s it.”
“You’re lying,” she said.
“From now on, that’s it. I promise.”
She sighed and faced forward. Her lip began to tremble. “I screwed up, Shep. Now, you’re just content to keep going like we have been.”
“Yes. I mean … is that okay? Isn’t that what you want? What do you mean, you screwed up?”
Her lips pressed together into a hard line. “I shouldn’t have said no,” she whimpered softly.
I exhaled, trailing off in thought. “To me? When I asked you to marry me?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice almost pleading. “I wasn’t ready then.”
“I know. It’s okay,” I said, squeezing her hand. “I’m not giving up on us.”
“How do we fix this? I’m willing to do whatever. I just want it to be the way it used to be. Well, not exactly, but …”
I smiled, watching her stumble over the words. She was trying to tell me something without saying it, and that was something she wasn’t comfortable with. America always said what she wanted. It was one of the million reasons I loved her.
“I wish I could go back to that moment. I need a do-over.”
“A do-over?” I asked.
She was both hopeful and frustrated. I opened my mouth to ask why, but quarter-sized hail began to pelt the windshield.
“Shit. Shit!” I yelled, imagining every dent being pounded into the body. I slowed down, looking for an exit.
“What do we do?” America asked, sitting up and planting her hands on the seat.
“How far out are we?” I asked.
America scrambled for her phone. She tapped on it a few times. “We’re just outside Emporia. So, a little over an hour?” she yelled over the sound of rain and a thousand ice chunks nailing the paint at forty miles per hour.
I slowed down even more, seeing the glow of brake lights from vehicles pulled over on the shoulder. The windshield wipers were echoing my heartbeat in a fast but steady rhythm, like the dance music at The Red.