“There are only two explanations for you keeping this from me. The first is because you still see me as I saw myself for two years—weak. The second…is that this had nothing to do with me in the first place, that you’re leaving and waiting for the right time to tell me.”

Griffin dropped both hands to the table and bent forward, trying to catch his breath. He wanted to argue with her on both counts. The truth was, he didn’t see her as weak. That was never the case. But he had placed her in his own glass cabinet—beautiful and fragile, only to be taken out with the utmost care. He hadn’t meant to, but he’d just proven to her that’s what he’d done.

And what about the second part?

“You’re right,” he said, straightening to face her, and her breathing hitched at his words. “Not the way you think you are, though. You’re the strongest person I know, Maggie. You might not believe me, but that doesn’t mean I’m lying.” He ran a hand through his hair. “No matter how twisted their means, the only way my parents know how to love me is to protect me from fucking up. My sisters, too. People have always picked up the pieces for me until I finally had the balls to step out on my own. But I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far, huh? Guess I can’t escape being a Reed when it’s all I know.”

He let out a bitter laugh. Maggie was the catalyst for him to change his life. After always taking the easy way out, Griffin cut himself off from his family’s financial support, choosing a job that paid next to nothing but made him happy instead of working for his father. All he’d ever wanted to do was break free from the hold his family had on him and be his own person. But he still couldn’t escape being just like them, treating Maggie how they’d always treated him.

“I thought by waiting I was protecting you—”

“I don’t need protecting,” she interrupted.

He nodded. “I know.” Then he let out a long sigh. “But I was protecting me, too.”

“From what?”

He knew she was still mad, but that didn’t stop him. He grabbed her hand and squeezed, bringing her knuckles to his lips. He just needed at least one part of her close, to maintain the connection before it was lost for good.

“From wanting two things I might not be able to have.”

“You have to take this fellowship,” she said. “You can’t turn down something like this.”

He kept his lips pressed to her skin as he spoke. “I can’t go without you,” he said. “I can’t chase this dream if you don’t chase it with me.”

Maggie inhaled, and he heard the shaking in her breath. Not a good sign. He closed his eyes as he waited for her to respond.

“It’s not my dream,” she said. “And I love you, more than you can imagine, but I can’t let you be my only dream. And I can’t let you jeopardize yours by thinking you need to protect me.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but she cut him off.

“You just admitted it yourself. The only thing that’s changed in my daily life is adding more classes, and you’re already afraid I’m going to break. What will happen if I uproot my life and go with you? How will you be able to focus on you if you’re always worrying about me?”

He pulled her to him now, and she didn’t protest. Griffin pressed his lips to her forehead, then her eyes and cheeks. Finally her lips. She kissed him back.

“It’s only a year,” she said, but there was nothing convincing in her tone. Griffin had always found something special about kissing away her tears, tasting the salt on his tongue along with everything Maggie. Yet somehow he knew it that night he opened the letter just as he did now—these tears meant the end of something. Maybe not the end of them, not yet. Though as close as he held her…and as much as she clung to him as well…the distance began to grow, and would eventually put hundreds of miles between them.

“Yeah,” he whispered, sure that he would lose it if he tried to speak out loud. “It’s only a year.”

Chapter Nineteen

Miles

“What is this?” Miles asked, sipping his beer. His fingertips brushed the edge of a picture frame, but instead of a photograph, inside it sat an acceptance letter to the University of Virginia.

Alex was popping the top off his own bottle. He shrugged as he made his way to the small space that doubled as a kitchen eating area and small living space.

“I’m going to guess that you can read,” he said to Miles, a tightness to his voice he seemed to want to disguise with his disarming smile.

So Miles decided to prove Alex’s assumption. He read aloud.

“Dear Mr. Karas… We are delighted to welcome you to the University of Virginia’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as the Cavaliers’ men’s soccer team—”

Alex tipped the frame over softly so it laid facedown on the shelf where it sat.

“Just proving you right,” Miles said. “Been reading since I was three. I’m precocious like that. Do you find my precociousness adorable?” he teased, and Alex ignored him, brushing past his shoulder and collapsing onto a small couch.

“So you went to the University of Virginia?” Miles asked.

Alex shook his head, then let out a long breath.

“I went to the City University of New York and then came back to Greece for culinary training, the only thing my father would pay for.”

Miles sat down next to him. He hadn’t wanted to know Alex’s name a few hours ago, and now here he was in the man’s apartment, on the brink of learning his history. His first instinct was to kiss him, to keep the past at bay even if it was only Alex’s and not his own. But when Alex turned to face him, their knees bumping as he did, Miles could tell Alex wanted, maybe needed, to tell him the rest of the story, so he let him.

“What happened with Virginia?” Miles asked.

Alex took a swig of his beer.

“I broke my leg the spring before my first year, playing on my secondary school’s team.”

Miles laid a hand on Alex’s knee, the gesture so natural he hadn’t realized he’d done it until Alex let his own hand rest on top of it.

“They took away your scholarship for an injury?” Miles asked, still not understanding.

Alex shook his head. “They took away my scholarship because I had to have three surgeries to fix my leg, because I’m lucky I can even walk on my own. Playing again was never an option, which meant the University of Virginia wasn’t an option anymore, either.”

Miles’s heart twisted at the thought of losing something like that.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Shit, I’m really sorry.”

Alex took another swig from his bottle.

“I’m not,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. I spent a long time wallowing. I couldn’t even attend university the first year I was supposed to because of the surgeries and missing deadlines for applying anywhere for that fall semester. So yeah, I wallowed for a good few years until I found cooking. And then life just sort of clicked.”

He squeezed Miles’s hand over his knee, and Miles felt something shift in the air between them.

“Wait,” he said. “If you’re not sorry that it happened, why did it bother you when I started reading the letter?”

Alex drained the last of his bottle and then set it on the table next to the frame, which he promptly righted.

“I love that letter,” he said. “It’s a reminder that losing something doesn’t mean losing everything, but I haven’t heard the words on that page in a long time. Hearing it in your voice? I don’t know, it was the past and the present colliding like it hasn’t before.”

Alex shifted so he sat straight instead of reclined against the cushions. Both hands now free, he brought a hand to Miles’s neck, urging him closer. Miles didn’t resist, bowing his head toward Alex, who stopped him before their lips could touch.