I Never Promised You A Rose Garden

Kassidy's P.O.V.

“It’ll be okay Kass; I’ll come back up for Grad and you can come down for mine, we’ll make it work,” he murmured into my hair as I clung to him, tears streaming down my face even though I had tried to keep them at bay.

“Jared… you’re going to be thirteen hours away,” I reminded him, and he nodded.

“I know, I know baby,”

“God and I thought it was hard for the rest of the season when you were all over the place, but I knew you’d be back. This time…” I choked on my words a bit, and he held me tighter to him. The remainder of the hockey season had flown by, and while we’d spent all the time we possibly could together, it didn’t feel like enough. I didn’t want this to end, not after it finally became something.

“I’ll be back Kass, you know that. You knew it wouldn’t be easy,” he gently reminded me, and I nodded, feeling silly again.

“I know, I’m sorry,” I sniffed, pulling away a little bit. Jared pushed some hairs off of my face before pressing a kiss to the tip of my nose.

“Don’t be Kass; I know it’ll be hard, but we can make it work. We will make it work,” he assured me, as if it was going to be as easy as just saying it. I curled closer into him, pulling my knees up as I sat on his lap, the two of us curled up on the corner of the couch at his place.

We sat there in silence, relishing the time we had, because tomorrow night he was flying back home to Thunder Bay, and with the draft happening in June who knew if he was going to be back next year. I hoped like hell he was, but that didn’t mean anything – especially not knowing where I was going to be next year either. I couldn’t afford to go to University right now, but at the same time if Jared wasn’t going to be in Sudbury I really didn’t want to be here either. Every time I thought of it I felt ridiculous – how attached I was to him even though we’d only been together for a couple of months. But I couldn’t imagine being without him right now – we were constantly at each other’s houses or together - and the time until Graduation was going to be awful.

“You okay?” Jared asked, and I nodded.

“As okay as I can be,” I replied, and he sighed.

“I’m so sorry Kass, if I could just stay here I would, but my parents would kill me,” he chuckled, and I managed to laugh with him. His parents liked me, and I didn’t want that to change by keeping their baby boy thirteen hours away his last year of school.

“I know, it’s okay – I’ll get over it. It just sucks,” I told him, and he chuckled again.

“That’s putting it lightly,”

“I just don’t know how we’ll make it work so far apart Jared,” I admitted, and he sat up straighter, and put his hands on my shoulders.

“Kass, I never promised you a rose garden – we both knew this was going to be more difficult than the average relationship, but we can definitely make this work. It won’t always be easy, and sometimes we’re probably going to get frustrated and just want to quit, but we won’t. We won’t because what we have is something that’s hard to find and we’ve gotta hold on to that,” he told me, and I burst into tears again.

“I love you Jared,” it was out before I could even think of it, and he pulled me a little bit tighter.

“I love you too Kassidy, he replied, and we fell asleep together knowing that things would be okay.