Julian (Beautiful Mine #1) by Gia DeLuca

skinny jeans, black flats, and a creamy blouse. The last thing I wanted was for him to think I was trying too hard, but I also wanted to look better than I had the night of our ill-fated pizza date.
    As I drove to Potter Park, an inner dialogue began to play. I imagined Spencer telling me I should move to Nashville to be with him, or maybe he’d tell me he was moving back home to attend college nearby to be with me. Or maybe he’d suggest we keep talking to see where this was headed.
    If nothing else, I just wanted him to say he made a mistake.
    Within minutes I’d arrived, my heart thumping loud in my ears as I tried to play it cool. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him standing outside his Range Rover, leaning against the door with his hands casually stuffed in his pockets. He was watching me. I could feel it. The second I turned his way and our eyes met, he smiled.
    I popped a piece of cinnamon gum into my mouth and smoothed my dark hair down.
    “Hey,” I said as I climbed out of my car and walked his way.
    “Hi,” he said, his eyes locked into mine. He reached over and pulled me closer to him as a gust of cold March wind ruffled through our hair. I leaned my head on his chest and he rested his chin on top. We had always fit together so perfectly, and we still did.
    The warmth of this breath on top of my head took the chill right out of the early spring air, and I couldn’t help but breathe him in. All of him. Ivory soap.  Burberry cologne. Vanilla car freshener. Clean laundry. It was a concoction that conjured up every sentimental memory of us all at the same time.
    “I’ve missed this,” I sighed.
    “Me too,” he said.
    “Why’d it take you so long to reach out to me?” I asked. I pulled away to look at him, but didn’t let go.
    “I don’t know,” he said, staring off. “Pride?”
    “You’re the one who broke up with me, remember?” The sharp jab of the painful recollection of the day he told me it was over, that there was no future for us, came back as fresh as ever. It stung me all over again and briefly took me to that dark place, if only for a second.
    “I never stopped loving you,” he said. “I just didn’t know how it was going to work out with me being three hundred miles away and us never seeing each other.”
    He failed to bring up his indiscretion, like always, still standing by his claim that kissing another girl while drunk at a party hardly counted as cheating.
    “We could’ve made it work,” I said. The desperate, teenager in love part of me would’ve moved mountains to stay together back then.
    “Maybe.”
    “I would’ve made it work.”
    “My dad…” he started. “Never mind.”
    “Your dad what?” I asked, stepping back.
    “He thought you’d be a distraction. He wanted me to have the true college experience, you know?”
    “And I would’ve prevented that?”
    “I think so.”
    “Does your dad know you’re talking to me now? I mean, I know it’s only been a couple days, but what would he think? And do you care what he thinks now?” I could taste the bitterness of my words, but behind it was a sliver of hope, the sliver that always remained, no matter what.
    He ran his fingers through his thick auburn hair, leaving a mess of tousled tendrils behind. “Everything is so complicated right now, Evie. You don’t even know.”
    “Right,” I said, hand on my hip. “That’s what you said last night.”
    He reached his arm out to my hips and pulled me back into him. “All I know is that no one I’ve been with since we broke up has made me feel half the way I felt when I was with you.”
    My eyes welled as he said the words I’d been needing to hear for years. Spencer reached up and wiped away a tear that had formed in the corner of my eye and leaned his face down toward mine. “I don’t want to go back to Nashville. I want to stay here with you.” He sucked in a deep breath, and for a minute, appeared to be considering it. “But I-I can’t. I