He doesn’t know it, but I’m not waking him up in the morning. There is no tomorrow. At least not for him and me.

I already insisted on driving myself, so the boys helped me pack up my Lexus this afternoon. My parents will drive it home from the airport’s long-term parking lot when they come back to town in a few weeks.

All we have is tonight.

Whatever words need to be said… whatever this final night needs to be… this is it.

I climb onto the bed and drape myself over him as an ache that can’t be quelled settles inside me. Tears pool in my eyes and fall freely without permission, landing on his chest and painting his abs with sorrow.

“Hey,” he tries to comfort. “Stop that. Don’t cry, princess. We still have tonight.”

I nod against him and sniff before speaking my truth. “You have to let me go.”

He shudders under me before replying. “I know.”

But he doesn’t. Or maybe he does and he’s that much better at hiding his emotions than I am. I don’t want to cause him more pain. But I have to make sure he understands. “This is it, Dem. After tonight—”

He interrupts me with a growl that reverberates through my chest. “I know,” he says again. This time, his anguish is clear, pain coating those two words. He gets it.

We lie still together, accepting what we can’t change while resisting the pull of what could have been.

He breaks the silence first.

“Every day we’ve spent together has been better than any version of my life before you.”

I sniffle, the tightness in my chest threatening to pull me under as I try and hold back my tears.

He strokes both hands down my back, and I swear he trembles beneath me. When he speaks again, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s fighting back tears, too.

“In another life—where you could stay, or I could go—in another life, I think I could love you forever.”

A sob escapes me this time, because his feelings aren’t just his own.

I love this man. I think I could love him forever, too.

But it was never supposed to be Dempsey and me. Part of me wishes we had never met—that I had never walked into The Oak that first night. Not knowing what his love feels like would be a fair tradeoff for not having to leave him and feel like this now.