“You’re not getting it!” Parker jerks her hands back from mine and takes a step back, only to come right back toward me, closer this time.
She meets my eyes. “Don’t mute me, Ben. Please don’t mute me. Let me say this.”
My heart begins to pound.
With fear. And hope.
When her hands come toward me again, they’re shaking, and she hesitates slightly before resting her palms lightly against my cheeks.
“Lance didn’t break up with me,” she says. “I broke up with him.”
I don’t breathe. Can’t breathe. “Why?”
Her eyes roam over my features as though searching for something. “You really don’t know?”
My heart is pounding i
n earnest now, but still I don’t move.
“I don’t think—” I break off, having to clear my throat. “I don’t think I could bear it if I was wrong.”
“Last night, after I sang to you, where did you go?”
My hands lift, covering hers. “So you were singing to me?”
Parker’s eyes manage to roll despite the fact that they’re watery. “Of course.”
I hesitate, unsure of how much I should tell her, but it’s too late for either of us to go back now. “Lance had a ring,” I say slowly.
“I know. I saw it.”
“He showed it to me,” I tell her. “He asked my permission or some shit, I guess.”
“Did you give it to him?” she asks.
“What?”
“Did you give him permission?”
“Of course,” I say.
Her eyes go carefully blank, and her hands drop as she takes a step backward.
“No, Parks…you don’t…I thought you loved him. I thought you wanted to marry him.”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t. I don’t.”
I close my eyes, hardly daring to hope.
“Parker—” My throat closes, and I have to clear it again. “Why did you come over here tonight?”
“Because I made a mistake,” she whispers. “Because I promised my best friend that if we slept together, that I wouldn’t fall for him. I promised him that nothing would change. That we could go back to where we were.”
She glances at the floor before looking back at me. “But I did fall for him. And I don’t want things to go back to how they were.”
I open my mouth, but happiness is getting in the way of words, and I can’t seem to make a single noise.
“If you’re going to reject me, do it quickly,” she says. “Like when you ripped off that Band-Aid after my tetanus shot last year. Just end the pain fast—”