The Definition of Fate

Chapter 60

I love you

with every

piece of me.

I will love

and love

and love

until I have nothing

left,

and then

I will make more

out of the nothing
that lives

where everything

once did.

I would

dismantle me
to put you
back togetheragain.

- Tyler Knott Gregson

Don't go. Don't leave me.

I knot my fingers in the back of Josh's henley and pull him against me, my head nestled in the crevice between his chin and shoulder. Even though I know Josh and I need to have a conversation about the future, I don't want to. I want to get lost in his presence, in the twinkling blue eyes that stunned me the first time we met, in the strength of his shoulders and the curve of his mouth and the touch of his calloused fingertips.

For the first time in my life, I don't want to think about the future. I want to be selfish and cling to what we have right now before it slips like sand through our fingers.

Josh sighs and his body relaxes against me. "I...I don't even know how to tell you how much I've missed you. These last few months..."

"I know."

"They've been hell."

"I know."

Josh shifts against me and wraps his arms around the small of my back. "I don't want to leave."

I want to tell him to stay, but I can't ask Josh to do something that would only hurt him in the long run.

"I wish you didn't have to."

Josh curses under his breath. "This isn't fair."

Tears well in my eyes and I want to scream at fate for bringing us together only to tear us apart again.

"Why--why us?" Josh rages on, his voice cracking. "Haven't we been through enough?"

I've loved Josh for almost seven years. For seven years, we've tried to make this work, but fate and our own faults and follies have intervened, weaving us together and apart again and again. We haven't been strong enough to fight against fate to find a happy ending. I feel trapped, like there's absolutely nothing I can do.

"I just...I want you, Rach, and I thought I could handle the distance and handle not seeing you and being with you everyday, but I've been going crazy. I haven't--haven't felt like this before, like I can't breathe when you're not around, and I just...how do we keep going like this? Was this how it was for you when we broke up before?"
I twine my arms around Josh's neck, leaning my cheek against his shoulder. I don't want to go back to those days after our first break up when I felt completely alone and adrift and broken.

"This is worse. Then I thought things were over and I'd never see you again and we weren't together for very long, but now...now we know what it's like. We know what we're missing, and it..." I suck in a deep breath.