So Totally by Gwen Hayes Page A

win.”
    He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s not a contest, Carrington. I know your life is weird right now, but you aren’t the only one this is affecting.”
    “I’m not picking up your broadcast, Nate.” When he didn’t say anything, my mind shifted into overdrive again. “Look, I know I’m chronologically impaired, but I’m not stupid. If you don’t want to do this anymore, whatever this is, just tell me. If I’ve misread your—”
    “That’s not it. The mixed signals yesterday…I guess it’s my way of not dealing.”
    “Dealing with what? Just tell me what changed, because you were dealing with everything just fine before that.”
    He gestured for me to sit on the love seat, which I wasn’t sure I wanted to do. Sitting meant I couldn’t storm around the room if he pissed me off again. It meant I couldn’t just run out the door if things got too heavy.
    “You’ve sort of complicated my life.”
    Oh, I definitely needed an easy out of there.
    “Not in a bad way,” he went on. “I’ve never really felt like I belonged here, if that makes sense. It’s like I got plunked down in the middle of someone else’s life. The part of Nate Berliss is now being played by Nate Berliss… I chalked it up to growing pains or just growing, I guess. I had girlfriends, kind of, I have friends, and I have more family than any one person could ever need—but I never connect. Not really.” He paced. It was a small room—pacing was a little on the pointless side if you ask me, but I didn’t interrupt. “Then one night I wake up with the urge to draw a girl. You. I connected to my life like somebody finally plugged me in. It was wild. I draw comics all the time, but I never felt it like that.
    “The next night, you show up at my door. And you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. And you’re funny and so goddamned smart. Being with you, it’s like—what was that movie with the midgets and the yellow bricks?”
    “ Wizard of Oz ?” I answered. Did he just call me the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen? My heart blossomed like a flower inside my rib cage.
    “Yeah. Remember how it was all black and white and then it was suddenly color? That’s how it was. When I met you.”
    His description overwhelmed me. I’d prepared myself for a lot of things, being told I put the color into Technicolor wasn’t one of them. Still, it didn’t explain what happened to make him change his mind.
    He gauged my reaction before starting again. “You’ve been like this force of nature in my life—a whirlwind with red hair.” He sat next to me, taking my hands. “And then you offered to take Kevin’s detention.”
    The lines of my forehead wrinkled in confusion. “For the record, you had me at ‘the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen’ but lost me at ‘you offered to take Kevin’s detention.’”
    “I knew you were smart, funny, and beautiful. I didn’t know for sure, until that moment, that you’re honorable and brave too.”
    “So naturally that meant you had to cut out my heart and chop it into a million pieces. Because you think I’m brave and honorable?” I yanked my hands back because it was too hard to be angry when he was touching me. “Nate—”
    He covered my mouth. “Let me finish, Red. I realized that you could be gone at any minute. I mean, I’ve known that all along—but it hit me you are going to leave this huge hole in my life when you go. I guess I just freaked out.” He’d softened me up enough to take my hands back into his. “And I’ll never know when it will take place. You’ll at least know what happens to you. I won’t. One day, I’ll wake up and you’ll just be gone and I won’t even know if you’re okay.” He clenched his jaw tightly and rose, needing the distance again, I guess. “And then what? I wait ten years and catch a glimpse of you at the hospital nursery?” He paced again, heaven help us both. “So I freaked out. I thought it would be better